ple men
to disarm us. I don't care! I have my private opinion of such brute
strength. JE ME MOQUE!"

She wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes. Then ruthlessly she drowned
his reply in a torrent of music. Like mad she played, rocking her
slender body back and forth along the key-board; holding rigid her
fingers, her hands, and the muscles of her arms. The bass notes roared
like the rumbling of thunder; the treble flashed like the dart of
lightnings. Abruptly she muted the instrument. Silence fell as something
that had been pent and suddenly released. She arose from the piano stool
quite naturally, both hands at her hair.

"Aren't Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard dear old people?" said she.

"What is your address in New York?" demanded Orde. She sank into a chair
nearby with a pretty uplifted gesture of despair.

"I surrender!" she cried, and then she laughed until the tears started
from her eyes and she had to brush them away with what seemed to Orde an
absurd affair to call a handkerchief. "Oh, you are delicious!" she said
at last. "Well, listen. I live at 12 West Ninth Street. Can you remember
that?" Orde nodded. "And now any other questions the prisoner can reply
to without incriminating herself, she is willing to answer." She folded
her hands demurely in her lap.

Two days later Orde saw the train carry her away. He watched the rear
car disappear between the downward slopes of two hills, and then finally
the last smoke from the locomotive dissipate in the clear blue.

Declining Jane's kindly meant offer of a lift, he walked back to town.

XV

The new firm plunged busily into its more pressing activities. Orde
especially had an infinitude of details on his hands. The fat note-book
in his side pocket filled rapidly with rough sketches, lists, and
estimates. Constantly he interviewed men of all kinds--rivermen, mill
men, contractors, boat builders, hardware dealers, pile-driver captains,
builders, wholesale grocery men, cooks, axe-men, chore boys--all a
little world in itself.

The signs of progress soon manifested themselves. Below Big Bend the
pile-drivers were at work, the square masses of their hammers rising
rapidly to the tops of the derricks, there to pause a moment before
dropping swiftly to a dull THUMP! They were placing a long, compact row,
which should be the outer bulwarks separating the sorting-booms from
the channel of the river. Ashore the carpenters were knocking together
a long, low structure