to be thought of, and it was not.

Nothing further was needed to complete his humiliation. He picked up
his hat and with the thought of getting out as quietly as he had come
in. In rising he swept a tumbler at his elbow from the table. The
glass broke on the floor, and Marion exclaimed, "What is that?" and
started for the dining-room.

It was too late to get away. McCloud stepped to the portieres of the
trimming-room door and pushed them aside. Marion stood with a hat in
her hand, and Dicksie, sitting at the table, was looking directly at
the intruder as he appeared in the doorway. She saw in him her
pleasant acquaintance of the wreck at Smoky Creek, whose name she had
not learned. In her surprise she rose to her feet, and Marion spoke
quickly: "Oh, Mr. McCloud, is it you? I did not hear you come in."

Dicksie's face, which had lighted, became a spectacle of confusion
after she heard the name. McCloud, conscious of the awkwardness of
his position and the disorder of his garb, said the worst thing at
once: "I fear I am inadvertently overhearing your conversation."

He looked at Dicksie as he spoke, chiefly because he could not help
it, and this made matters hopeless.

She flushed more deeply. "I cannot conceive why our conversation
should invite a listener."

Her words did not, of course, help to steady him. "I tried to get
away," he stammered, "when I realized I was a part of it."

"In any event," she exclaimed hastily, "if you are Mr. McCloud I think
it unpardonable to do anything like that!"

"I am Mr. McCloud, though I should rather be anybody else; and I am
sorry that I was unable to help hearing what was said; I----"

"Marion, will you be kind enough to give me my gloves?" said Dicksie,
holding out her hand.

Marion, having tried once or twice to intervene, stood between the
firing-lines in helpless amazement. Her exclamations were lost; the
two before her gave no heed to ordinary intervention.

McCloud flushed at being cut off, but he bowed. "Of course," he said,
"if you will listen to no explanation I can only withdraw."

[Illustration: HELEN HOLMES AS MARION SINCLAIR IN THE PHOTO-PLAY
PRODUCTION OF "WHISPERING SMITH." (C) _American Mutual Studio_.]

He went back, dinnerless, to work all night; but the switchbacks were
doing capitally, and all night long, trains were rolling through
Medicine Bend from the West in an endless string. In the morning the
yard was nearly cleared of westbound tonnage. Mo