th a hand in dismissal. "That is all." Then, almost immediately:
"No; wait! ... Harriet, has he made any sign while I have been
talking?"

"Not much, if any," Harriet answered. "When you said he might not have
had anything to do with the attack upon you, but in that case he must
know who it was that struck you, he shut his eyes and wet his lips."

"That is all, Mr. Eaton," Santoine repeated.

Eaton started back to his compartment. As he turned, Harriet Santoine
looked up at him and their eyes met; and her look confirmed to him what
he had felt before--that her father, now taking control of the
investigation of the attack upon himself, was not continuing it with
prejudice or predisposed desire to damage Eaton, except as the evidence
accused him. And her manner now told, even more plainly than
Santoine's, that the blind man had viewed the evidence as far from
conclusive against Eaton; and as Harriet showed that she was glad of
that, Eaton realized how she must have taken his side against Avery in
reporting to her father.

For Santoine must have depended entirely upon circumstances presented
to him by Avery and Connery and her; and Eaton was very certain that
Avery and Connery had accused him; so Harriet Santoine--it could only
be she--had opposed them in his defense. The warmth of his gratitude
to her for this suffused him as he bowed to her; she returned a frank,
friendly little nod which brought back to him their brief companionship
on the first day on the train.

And as Eaton went back to his compartment through the open car, Dr.
Sinclair looked up at him, but Avery, studying his cribbage hand,
pretended not to notice he was passing. So Avery admitted too that
affairs were turning toward the better, just now at least, for Eaton.
When he was again in his compartment, no one came to lock him in. The
porter who brought his breakfast a few minutes later, apologized for
its lateness, saying it had had to be brought from a club car on the
next track, whither the others in the car, except Santoine, had gone.

Eaton had barely finished with this tardy breakfast when a bumping
against the car told him that it was being coupled to a train. The new
train started, and now the track followed the Mississippi River.
Eaton, looking forward from his window as the train rounded curves, saw
that the Santoine car was now the last one of a train--presumably bound
from Minneapolis to Chicago.

South they went, through Minn