"

Ford got to his feet.

"Promise me that you will give the Denver management as thorough an
investigation as you have given me, Mr. Colbrith; do that, and give me
absolute authority over the MacMorroghs and their men for one week; and
before the week's end we'll be hauling passengers and freight into Copah
over our own rails."

For a moment the president seemed to be on the point of yielding. Then
his habitual caution thrust out its foot and tripped him.

"I can't be pushed, Mr. Ford," he complained, with a return of the
irritated tone. "Let the matter rest for the present. And--and you may
consider yourself relieved from duty until I have gone a little deeper
into these charges against you. Mr. North accuses you, and you accuse
Mr. North. I must have time to approach those matters deliberately. I
don't know which of you to trust."

It was a deadlock. Ford bowed and laid his hand on the door.

"You are still the president of the Pacific Southwestern, Mr. Colbrith,
and while you remain president--"

The old man's pride of office took fire like tow in a furnace.

"What do you mean by that, Mr. Ford? Make yourself clear, sir!" he
quavered.

"I mean just this: if your niece, Miss Alicia Adair, hadn't been good
enough to say that she will be my wife, I'd carry this thing up to the
board of directors and do my level best to have you put where you could
do the least harm."

"You? Alicia?" the old man shrilled. And then, in an access of senile
rage that shook him like a leaf in the wind: "I said you were
suspended--you are discharged, sir--here and now! If you give another
order as an official of the Pacific Southwestern company, I'll--I'll put
you through the courts for it!"

Ford opened the door and went out, leaving the president clutching his
chair with one hand and balling the other into a shaking fist. The die
was cast, and he had thrown a blank at the very moment when the game
seemed to be turning his way. What would Alicia say?

As if the unspoken query had evoked her, the door of her room opened
silently and she stood before him in the corridor.

"Tell me," she commanded.

"We have fought it out, and I've had my beating," he said soberly. "When
I thought I had him fairly down,--he was actually begging me to stay on
with the company,--we got tangled up again over North, and he fired me
bodily."

"Did you--did you tell him about our--"

"Yes; and that was what set off the final fireworks."

She p