Her chair was close beside the low-swung hammock. She bent to his ear and
whispered a single sentence. For a minute or two he sat motionless,
weighing and balancing the chance of success against the swiftly
multiplying difficulties and hazards.

"You call it desperate," he said at length; "if there is a bigger word in
the language, you ought to find it and use it. The risk is that of a
forlorn hope; not so much for me, perhaps, as for the innocent--or at
least ignorant--accomplices I'll have to enlist."

She nodded.

"That is true. But how much is your railroad worth?"

"It is bonded for fifty millions first, and twenty millions second
mortgage."

"Well, seventy millions are worth fighting for: worth a very considerable
risk, I should say."

"Yes." And after another thoughtful interval: "How did you come to think
of it?"

"It grew out of a bit of talk with the man who will have to put the apex
on our pyramid after we have done our part."

"Will he stand by us? If he doesn't, we shall all be no better than dead
men the morning after the fact."

She clasped her hands tightly over her knee, and said:

"That is one of the chances we must take, David; one of the many. But it
is the last of the bridges to be crossed, and there are lots of them in
between. Are the details possible? That was the part I couldn't go into by
myself."

He took other minutes for reflection.

"I can't tell," he said doubtfully. "If I could only know how much time we
have."

Her eyes grew luminous.

"David, what would you do without me?" she asked. "To-morrow night, in
Stephen Hawk's office in Gaston, you will lose your railroad. MacFarlane
is there, or if he isn't, he'll be there in the morning. Bucks, Guilford
and Hawk will go down from here to-morrow evening; and the Overland people
are to come up from Midland City to meet them."

There was awe undisguised in the look he gave her, and it had crept into
his voice when he said:

"Portia, are you really a flesh-and-blood woman?"

She smiled.

"Meaning that your ancestors would have burned me for a witch? Perhaps
they would: I think quite likely they burned women who made better
martyrs. But I didn't have to call in Flibbertigibbet. The programme is a
carefully guarded secret, to be sure; but it is known--it had to be
known--to a number of people outside of our friends the enemy. You've
heard the story of the inventor and his secret, haven't you?"

"No."

"Well, the man h