ock-holders. And he _has_ flogged it into
shape. Look out of that window, Uncle Sidney!"

A long passenger train, crowded to the platforms, and with the private
car "01" in tow, was winding down the grade of the opposite hillside,
and as they stepped to the windows the engineer woke the echoes with the
engine whistle.

"The first one of many, let us hope," said the young man, standing at
his uncle's elbow. Then, with quite a different note in his voice: "It's
Stuart's work, all of it. He has scarcely stopped to eat or sleep since
that horrible night in the Pannikin valley. And that night, Uncle
Sidney, I fought shoulder to shoulder with him--as a brother should; he
is a man, and--there are not many more--like him."

The president's thin lips were drawn into straight lines, and the thin
goat's-beard stood out at the argumentative angle. Mr. Colbrith was
chary of his emotions.

"Will he sell us that stock in the Little Alicia, Charles Edward?"

Adair smiled at the determined return to the practical.

"No," he said; "I don't think he will--I shouldn't, if I were in his
place. But he will do the next best thing: he will marry Alicia and so
bring it into the family. And on the railroad conditions I have named,
I am quite sure he will make you his voting proxy if you want to use it
in forcing the combine."

The president took a turn as far as the clerk's counter and back. The
lobby was deserted, everybody having gone to welcome the first train
into Copah.

"You seem to have North against the wall," he said when he came back.
"Yet, for the sake of--of, well of his wife and children, he must have
even-handed justice. I must insist upon that."

It was the most lovable thing in the irascible old man--his undying
loyalty to a man in whom he had once believed. Adair slew the last hope
with reluctance. Drawing a thick packet of undelivered telegrams from
his pocket, he handed it to his uncle.

"Justice is the one thing Mr. North is most anxious to dodge," he said
gravely. "When the news of the catastrophe reached him, he resigned by
wire--to New York; not to you--got his physician to order him out of the
country, and left Denver between two days. Ford has sent Frisbie to
Denver to hold things together, and there has been a number of
removals--subject, of course, to your approval. You will find the
history of all these minor happenings in those telegrams, which I have
been collecting--and holding--until you had leisure to