with my car, and should be with him by eleven o'clock.
Then call up the yard office and tell Matthews to let me have the car
and engine by eight-thirty, sharp," he directed.

The operator made a note of the order and went out, and the
superintendent settled himself in his desk-chair for another hour's hard
work with the stenographer. At twenty-five minutes past eight he heard
the wheel-grindings of the up-coming service-car, and the weary
short-hand man snapped a rubber band upon the notes of the final letter.

"That's all for to-night, Grady, and it's quite enough," was the
superintendent's word of release. "I'm sorry to have to work you so
late, but I'd like to have those letters written out and mailed before
you lock up. Are you good for it?"

"I'm good for anything you say, Mr. Lidgerwood," was the response of the
one who was loyal to his salt, and the superintendent put on his light
coat and went out and down the stair.

At the outer door he turned up the long platform, instead of down, and
walked quickly to the _Nadia_, persuading himself that he must, in
common decency, tell the president that he was going away; persuading
himself that it was this, and not at all the desire to warm his hands at
the ungrateful fire of Eleanor's mockery, that was making him turn his
back for the moment upon the waiting special train.

XV

ELEANOR INTERVENES

The president's private car was side-tracked on the short spur at the
eastern end of the Crow's Nest, and when Lidgerwood reached it he found
the observation platform fully occupied. The night was no more than
pleasantly cool, and the half-grown moon, which was already dipping to
its early extinguishment behind the upreared bulk of the Timanyonis,
struck out stark etchings in silver and blackest shadow upon a ground of
fallow dun and vanishing grays. On such nights the mountain desert hides
its forbidding face, and the potent spell of the silent wilderness had
drawn the young people of the _Nadia's_ party to the out-door
trysting-place.

"Hello, Mr. Lidgerwood, is that you?" called Van Lew, when the
superintendent came across to the spur track. "I thought you said this
was a bad man's country. We have been out here for a solid hour, and
nobody has shot up the town or even whooped a single lonesome war-whoop;
in fact, I think your village with the heavenly name has gone
ingloriously to bed. We're defrauded."

"It does go to bed pretty early--that part of it wh