of the station; a
succession of shrill whistle toots, several minutes before, had warned
prospective passengers.

Latisan ran down the middle of the road and leaped aboard the slowly
moving train when it crossed the highway. Standing on the platform of
the passenger car, he shook his fists at assembled Adonia and yelled
again.

Brophy, from the tavern porch, looked hard at the girl and started down
the steps, making his way toward the jacket and cap which Latisan had
thrown away.

She ran and picked them up and hugged them in her arms with defiant
proprietorship.

"How come?" sneered Brophy. "Latest bulletin seemed to be that the
engagement was broke!" He was suddenly hostile.

She turned from the landlord and faced Crowley. The operative was
triumphant. "It's understood that I get the credit for this job," he
informed her, _sotto voce_. His air suggested that he was convinced that
the destiny of the Flagg drive had been settled.

All about her were implacable faces. The grins were gone. There was no
misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a
woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented
completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild
creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the
city was against her. In her agony of loneliness the thought of her kin
in the big house on the hill came to her mind. But to her, in spite of
her passionate efforts to aid, must be ascribed the defection of
Latisan--the breaking of her grandfather's last prop. She had
intensified in woeful degree the fault of her father; she had compassed
the ruin of the old man at a time when he was unable to restore his
fortunes by his own effort. The doors of the house on the hill were
barred by the iron of unforgiveness and by these new fires of her fault,
involuntary though that fault was.

Brophy stood before her. "I reckon you ain't going to be very popular
hereabout as a hash-slinger, Miss Whatever-your-name is." He snapped his
fingers and stretched his hand to command the transfer of the jacket and
cap. "I'll take 'em and put 'em in Ward's room."

But she clung to what she had retrieved as if she felt that she held a
hostage of fortune. Brophy refrained from laying violent hands on the
articles, and to save his face and create a diversion he turned on
Crowley.

"Let's see! You have bragged about being a detective! We don't stand for
your kind or tri