hat a fire down in the valley just across the
pike from the furnace? It _is_ a fire!"

He made a field-glass of his hands and looked long and steadily.

"You are quite right," he said coolly. "It's my foundry. Can you get
back to the hotel alone? If you can, I'll take the short cut down
through the woods. Good night, and--good-by." And before she could
reply, he had lowered himself over the cliff's edge and was crashing
through the underbrush on the slopes below.

XXIX

AS BRUTES THAT PERISH

It was the office building of the pipe foundry that burned on the night
of July fifteenth, and the fire was incendiary. Suspicion, put on the
scent by the night-watchman's story, pointed to Tike Bryerson as the
criminal. The old moonshiner, in the bickering stage of intoxication,
had been seen hanging about the new plant during the day, and had made
vague threats in the hearing of various ears in Gordonia.

Wherefore the small world of Paradise and its environs looked to see a
warrant sworn out for the mountaineer's arrest; and when nothing was
done, gossip reawakened to say that Tom Gordon did not dare to
prosecute; that Bryerson's crime was a bit of wild justice, so
recognized by the man whose duty it was to invoke the law.

It was remarked, also, that neither of the Gordons had anything to say,
and that an air of mystery enveloped the little that they did. The small
wooden office building was a total loss, but the night shift at the
Chiawassee had saved most of the contents; everything of value except
the small iron safe which had stood behind the manager's desk in the
private office. The safe, as the onlookers observed, was taken from the
debris and conveyed, unopened, across the road to the Chiawassee
laboratory and yard office. Whether or not its keepings were destroyed
by the fire, was known only to the younger Gordon, who, as the foreman
of the Chiawassee night shift informed a _Tribune_ reporter, had broken
it open himself, deep in the small hours of the night following the
fire, and behind the locked door of the furnace laboratory.

At another moment South Tredegar newspaperdom might have made something
of the little mystery. But there were more exciting topics to the fore.
The great strike, with Chicago and Pullman as its storm-centers, was
gripping the land in its frenzied fist, and the press despatches were
greedy of space. Hence, young Gordon was suffered to open his safe in
mysterious secrecy; to reb