"Takes after her dad," suggested Griffith.

"Him!"

"As to the brains and grit."

"Not in anything else, though. They're no more alike than garlic and roses."

"Getting poetic, eh?" cackled Griffith.

"Don't laugh, Grif. It's too serious a matter. I'd do anything in the world for her. She's the truest, grittiest girl alive. She told me straight out, there at the last, that she—she loved me."

"Crickey!" ejaculated Griffith. "She told you that?—she?—Miss—"

"Hush! not so loud!" cautioned Blake. Again the color deepened in his bronzed cheeks. His pale eyes shone very blue and soft. "It was when we heard the siren of Jimmy's steamer. She—You'll forget this, Grif? Never whisper a hint of it?"

"Sure! What you take me for?"

"Well, she wouldn't agree to wait. Wanted to be married as soon as we got aboard ship."

"She—!" Griffith lacked breath even for an expletive.

"I agreed. Couldn't help it, with her looking at me that way. Then we went down around through the cleft to the shore, where the boat was pulling in. Well, there was Jimmy in the sternsheets, in a white yachting suit—Me with my hyena pants, and Jenny in her leopard-skin dress!"

"Say, you were doing the Crusoe business!" cackled Griffith.

"It shook me out of my dream all right, soon as I set eyes on Jimmy. I waded out with—Miss Leslie, and put her into the boat. Told him to hurry her aboard. I cut back to the cleft—the place where we'd been staying."

"Off your head, eh?"

"No. Don't you see? I had to save Jenny. I had proved myself a pretty good cave-man, and she had been living so close to that sort of thing that she had lost her perspective. Wasn't fair to her to let her tie herself up to me till she'd first had a chance to size me up with the men of her class."

"You mean to say you passed up your chance?"

"I'd have been a blackguard to 've let her marry me then!" cried Blake, his eyes flashing angrily. He checked himself, and went on in a monotone: "I waited till Jimmy came back to fetch me. Course I had to explain the situation. Asked him to pull out without me, and send down a boat from Port Mozambique. No go. Finally we fixed it up for me to slip aboard into the forecastle."

"Well, I'll be—switched!" croaked Griffith. "You did that, to escape marrying the daughter of a multi-millionaire!"

"It would have been the same if she'd been poor, Grif. She's a lady, through and through, and I—I love her! God! how I love her!"

"Guess that's no lie," commented Griffith in his dryest tone.

Blake relaxed the grip that seemed to be crushing the arms of his chair.

"Well, I went aboard and kept under cover. Jimmy managed to keep her diverted till we put into Port Mozambique. There I sent a note aft to her, letting on that I had already landed, and swearing that I was going to steer clear of her until after she got back to her father. But I kept aboard, in the forecastle, as Jimmy had made me promise to do. At Aden, Jimmy put her on a P. and O. liner in the care of a friend of his, Lady Chetwynd, who was on her way home to England from India."

"He went along, too; leaving you to shift for yourself, eh?"

"Don't you think it! He had been spending half the time forward with me in that stew-hole of a forecastle. Soon as she was safe, I hiked aft and bunked with him. No; Jimmy's as square as they make 'em. To prove it—he had met Jenny before; greatly taken with her. There on the steamer was the very chance he had been after. But he played fair; didn't try to win her. Told me all about it, right at the first, and we came to an agreement. We were both to steer clear of her over on that side. That's why we stuck close to Ruthby Castle till Jenny sailed for home. No; Jimmy is white. He had invitations to more than one house-party where she was visiting around with Lady Chetwynd and Madam Gantry."

"So neither of you have seen her since there at Aden?"

"Yes, we have. Came on from New York with her and her aunt. They had stopped over when they landed, and we blundered into them before we could dodge."

"And Miss Leslie? You look glum. Guess you got what was coming to you, eh?"

Blake's face clouded. "Haven't seen her apart from her aunt yet. She has been kind but—mighty reserved. I'd give a lot to know whether—" He paused, gripping his chair convulsively. "Just the same, I haven't quit. The agreement with Jimmy is off to-morrow afternoon. She's had plenty of time for comparisons. I'll make my try then."

"Don't fash yourself, Tom. If she's the sort you say, and went as far as you say, she's not likely to throw you over now."

"You don't savvy!" exclaimed Blake. "There on that infernal coast I was the real thing—and the only one, at that. Here I'm just T. Blake, ex-bum, periodic drunkard, all around—"

"Stow that drivel!" ordered Griffith. "What if you were a kid hobo? What are you now?—one of the best engineers in the country; one that's going to make the top in short order. I tell you, you're going to succeed. What's more, Mollie said—"

"Mollie!" repeated Blake softly. "Say, but wasn't she a booster! Had even you beat, hands down. Good Lord, to think that she, of all the little women—! Only thing, typhoid isn't so bad as some things. They don't suffer so much."

"Yes," assented Griffith. "That helps—some—when I get to thinking of it. She went out quietly—wasn't thinking of herself."

"She never did!" put in Blake, "Say, but can't a woman make a heap of difference—when she's the right sort!"

"There was a message for you. She said, almost the last thing: 'Tell Tom not to give up the fight. Tell him,' she said, 'he'll win out, I know he'll win out in the end.'"

"God!" whispered Blake. "She said that?" He bent over and covered his eyes with his hand.

Griffith averted his head and peered at the blueprints on the nearest wall with unseeing eyes. A full minute passed. Keeping his face still averted, he began to tap out the ash and half-smoked tobacco from his pipe.

"H'm—guess you'd better work in a room apart," he remarked in a matter-of-fact tone. "Too much running in and out here. D' you want to start right off?"

"No," muttered Blake. He paused and then straightened to face his friend. His eyes were blood-shot but resolute, his face impassive. "No. I'll wait till after to-morrow. Big order on for to-morrow morning. Appointment to meet H. V."

"Hey?"

"He was down at the depot. You can imagine how effusive he wasn't over my saving his daughter. Curse the luck! If only she had had any one else for a father!"

"Now, now, Tommy, don't fly off the handle. You know there are lots of 'em worse than H. V."

"None I'm in so hard with. First place, there's that Q. T. survey."

"That's all smoothed over. He came around all right. Just ask for your pay-check. He'll shell out."

"I'll ask for interest. Ought to have a hundred per cent. I needed the money then mighty bad."

"We all did. Let it slide. He's her father. You can't afford to buck his game."

"I'd do it quick enough if it wasn't for her," rejoined Blake. "That's where he's got me. Lord! if only he and she weren't—!" Blake's teeth clenched on the end of the sentence.

"Now look here, Tommy," protested Griffith. "This isn't like you to hold a grudge. It's true H. V. did us dirt on the survey pay. But he gave in, soon as I got a chance to talk it over with him."

"'Cause he had to have you on the Michamac Bridge, eh?" demanded Blake, his face darkening.

"Stow it! That may be true, but—didn't I tell you he turned the bridge over to the Coville Company?"

"Afraid he'd be found out, eh?"

"Found out? What do you mean?"

"Mean!" repeated Blake, his voice hoarse with passion. He brought his big fist down upon the desk with the thud of a maul. "Mean? Listen here! I didn't write it to you—I couldn't believe it then, even of him. But answer me this, if you can. I was fool enough not to send my plans for the bridge competition to him by registered mail; I was fool enough to hand them in to his secretary without asking a receipt. After the contest, I called for my plans. Clerk told me he couldn't find them; couldn't find any record that they'd been received. I tell you my plans solved that central span problem. Who was it could use my plans?—who were they worth a mint of money to?"

Griffith stared at his friend, his forehead furrowed with an anxious frown. "See here, Tom—this tropical roughing—it must be mighty overtaxing on a man. You didn't happen to have a sunstroke or—"

Blake's scowl relaxed in an ironical grin. "All right, take it that way, if you want to. He let on he thought I was trying to blackmail him."

"Crickey! You don't mean to say you—"

"Didn't get a chance to see him that time. Just sent in a polite note asking for my plans. He sent out word by his private-detective office- boy that if I called again he'd have me run in."

"And now you come back with this dotty pipe-dream that he knows what became of your plans! Take my advice. Think it all you want, if that does you any good; but keep your head closed—keep it closed! First thing he'd do would be to look up the phone number of the nearest asylum."

"I'd like to see him do it," replied Blake. He shook his head dubiously. "That's straight, Grif. I'd like to see him do it. I can't forget he's her father. If only I could be sure he hadn't a finger in the disappearance of those plans—Well, you can guess how I feel about it."

"You're dotty to think it a minute. He's a money-grubber—as sharp as some others. But he wouldn't do a thing like that. Don't you believe it!"

"Wish I'd never thought of it—he's her father. But it's been growing on me. I handed them in to his secretary, that young dude, Ashton."

"Ashton? There you've hit on a probability," argued Griffith. "Of all the heedless, inefficient papa's boys, he takes the cake! He wasn't H. V.'s secretary except in name. Wine, women, sports, and gambling— nothing else under his hat. Always had a mess on his desk. Ten to one, he got your package mixed in the litter, and shoved all together into his wastebasket."

"I'll put it up to him!" growled Blake.

"What's the use? He couldn't remember a matter of business over night, to save him."

"Lord! I sweat blood over those plans! It was hard enough to enter a competition put up by H. V., but it was the chance of a lifetime for me. Why, if only I'd known in time that they were lost, I'd have put in my scratch drawings and won on them. I tell you, Grif, that truss was something new."

"Oh, no, there's no inventiveness, no brains in your head, oh, no!" rallied Griffith. "Wait till you make good on this Zariba Dam."

"You just bet I'll make a stagger at it!" cried Blake. His eyes shone bright with the joy of work,—and as suddenly clouded with renewed moroseness.

"I'll be working for you, though," he qualified. "I don't take any jobs from H. V. Leslie—not until that matter of the bridge plans is cleared up."



CHAPTER VIII

FLINT AND STEEL

At three minutes to ten the following morning Blake entered the doorway of the mammoth International Industrial Company Building. At one minute to ten he was facing the outermost of the guards who fenced in the private office of H. V. Leslie, capitalist.

"Your business, sir? Mr. Leslie is very busy, sir."

"He told me to call this morning," explained Blake.

"Step in, sir, please."

Blake entered, and found himself in a well-remembered waiting-room, in company with a dozen or more visitors. He swung leisurely across to the second uniformed doorkeeper.

"Business?" demanded this attendant with a brusqueness due perhaps to his closer proximity to the great man.

Blake answered without the flicker of a smile: "I'm a civil engineer, if you want to know."

"Your business here?"

"None that concerns you," rejoined Blake.

His eyes fixed upon the man with a cold steely glint that visibly disconcerted him. But the fellow had been in training for years. He replied promptly, though in a more civil tone: "If you do not wish to state your business to me, sir, you'll have to wait until—"

"No, I won't have to wait until," put in Blake. "Your boss told me to call at ten sharp."

"In that case, of course—Your name, please."

"Blake."

The man slipped inside, closing the door behind him. He was gone perhaps a quarter of a minute. When he reappeared, he held the door half open for Blake.

"Step in, sir," he said. "Mr. Leslie can spare you fifteen minutes."

Blake looked the man up and down coolly. "See here," he replied, "just you trot back and tell Mr. H. V. Leslie I'm much obliged for his favoring me with an appointment, but long as he's so rushed, I'll make him a present of his blessed quarter-hour."

"My land, sir!" gasped the doorkeeper. "I can't take such a message to him!"

"Suit yourself," said Blake, deliberately drawing a cigar from his vest pocket and biting off the tip.

This time the man was gone a full half-minute. He eyed Blake with respectful curiosity as he swung the door wide open and announced: "Mr. Leslie asks you to come in, sir."

As the door closed softly behind him, Blake stared around the bare little room into which he had been shown. He was looking for the third guardian of the sanctum,—the great man's private secretary. But the room was empty. Without pausing, he crossed to the door in the side wall and walked aggressively into the private office of Genevieve's father.

Mr. Leslie sat at a neat little desk, hurriedly mumbling into the trumpet of a small phonograph.

"Moment!" he flung out sideways, and went on with his mumbling.

Blake swung around one of the heavy leather-seated chairs with a twist of his wrist, and drew out a silver matchsafe. As he took out a match, Mr. Leslie touched a spring that stopped the whirring mechanism of the phonograph, and wheeled around in his swivel desk-chair.

"Dictate on wax," he explained. "Cuts out stenographer. Any clerk can typewrite. No mislaid stenographer's notes; no mistakes. Well, you're nearly on time."

"Sharp at the door, according to your waiting-room clock," said Blake, striking the match on his heel.

"Good—punctuality. First point you score. Now, what do you expect to get out of me?"

Blake held the match to his cigar with deliberate care, blew it out, and flipped it into the wastebasket, with the terse answer: "Just that much."

The other's bushy eyebrows came down over the keen eyes. For a full minute the two stared, the man of business seeking to pierce with his narrowed glance Blake's hard, open gaze. The failure of his attempt perhaps irritated him beyond discretion. At any rate, his silent antagonism burst out in an explosion of irascibility.

"Needn't tell me your game, young man," he rasped. "You think, because you were alone with my daughter, you can force me to pay hush money."

Blake rose to his feet with a look in his eyes before which Mr. Leslie shrank back and cringed.

"Wait! Sit down! sit down! I—I didn't mean that!" he exclaimed.

Blake drew in a deep breath and slowly sat down again. He said nothing, but puffed hard at his cigar.

Mr. Leslie rebounded from panic to renewed irascibility. "H'm! So you're one of that sort. I might have foreseen it."

Blake looked his indifference. "All right. That's the safety-valve. Blow off all the steam you want to through it. Only don't try the other again. You're her father, and that gives you a big vantage. Any one else have said what you did, he wouldn't have had the chance to take it back."

"Do you mean to threaten me?"

"I've smashed men for less."

"You look the part."

"It's not the part of a lickspittle."

"Look here, young man. As the man who happened to save the life of my daughter—"

"Suppose we leave her out of this palaver," suggested Blake.

"Unfortunately, that is impossible. It is solely owing to the obligations under which your service to her have put me that I—"

"That you're willing to let me come in here and listen to your pleasant conversation," broke in Blake ironically. "Well, let me tell you, I'm some busy myself these days. Just now I'm out collecting one of your past-due obligations, I've heard you admit you owe for that first Q. T. Railroad survey."

"There was no legal claim on me. I conceded the point at the request of Mr. Griffith."

"Had to hire him, eh? Best consulting engineer in the city. And he held out for a settlement," rallied Blake.

"You were one of the party?"

"Transitman."

"Then apply to my auditor. He has your pay-check waiting for you."

"How about interest? It's two years over-due."

"I never allow interest on such accounts."

Blake took out his cigar and looked at his antagonist, his jaw out- thrust. "If I had a million, I wouldn't mind spending it to make you pay that interest."

"You could spend twice that, and then not get it," snapped Mr. Leslie. "You'll soon find out I can't be driven, young man. On the other hand —how big a position do you think you could fill?"

"Quien sabe?"

"See here. You've put me under obligations. I'd rather it had been any other man than you—"

"Ditto on you!" rejoined Blake.

The blow struck a shower of flinty sparks from Mr. Leslie's narrowed eyes.

"You'll do well to be more conciliatory, young man," he warned.

"Conciliatory? Bah!"

"Didn't take you for a fool."

"Well, you won't take me in for one," countered Blake.

"You seem determined to hurt your own interests. Unfortunately you've put me in your debt—an obligation I must pay in full."

"Why not get a receiver appointed, and reorganize?" gibed Blake. "That's one of the ways you dodge obligations, isn't it?"

Mr. Leslie's wrinkled face quickly turned red, and from red to purple. He thrust a quivering finger against a push-button. Blake grinned exultantly and picked up his hat.

"Don't bother your bouncer," he remarked in a cheerful tone. "I don't need any invitation to leave."

The tall doorkeeper stepped alertly into the room, but turned back on the instant at sight of his master's repellent gesture.

"Mistake," snapped Mr. Leslie, and as the man disappeared, he turned to Blake. "Wait! Don't go yet."

Blake was rising to his feet. He paused, considered, and resumed his seat. Mr. Leslie had regained his normal color and his composure. He put his finger-tips together, and jerked out in his usual incisive tone: "I propose to liquidate this obligation to you without delay. Would you prefer a cash payment?"

"No." Again Blake set his jaw. "You couldn't settle with me for cash, not even if you overdrew your bank account."

"Nonsense!" snapped Mr. Leslie. He studied the young man's resolute face, and asked impatiently, "Well—what?"

"Can't you get it into your head?" rejoined Blake. "I'm not asking for any pay for what I did."

"What, then? If not a money reward—I see. You're perhaps ambitious. You want to make a name in your profession."

"Ever know an engineer that didn't?"

"I see. I'll arrange to give you a position that—"

"Thanks," broke in Blake dryly. "Wait till I ask you for a job."

"What are you going to do?—loaf?"

"That's my business."

Mr. Leslie again studied Blake's face. Though accustomed to read men at a glance, he was baffled by the engineer's inscrutable calm.

"You nearly always win at poker," he stated.

"Used to," confirmed Blake. "Cut it out, though. A gambler is a fool. More fun in a nickel earned than a dollar made at play or speculating."

"So! You're one of these socialist cranks."

Blake laughed outright. "It's the cranks that make the world go 'round! No; I've been too busy boosting for Number One—like you—to let myself think of the other fellow. The trouble with that crazy outfit is they want to set you to working for the people, instead of working the people. No; I've steered clear of them. 'Fraid I might get infected with altruism. Like you, I'm a born anarchist—excuse me!— individualist. What would become of those who have the big interests of the country at heart if they didn't have the big interests in hand?"

Mr. Leslie ignored the sarcasm. "Either you're a fool, or you're playing a deep game. It occurs to me you may have heard that my daughter has money in her own right."

"Three million, she said," assented Blake.

"She told you!"

"Guess she told me more than she seems to have told you."

"About what?"

"Ask her."

Mr. Leslie's eyes narrowed to thin slits. "Her aunt wrote me that she suspected you had the effrontery to—aspire to my daughter's hand. I couldn't believe it possible."

"That so?" said Blake with calm indifference.

Mr. Leslie started as though stung. "It's true, then! You—you!—" He choked with rage.

"I thought that would reach you," commented Blake.

"You rascal! you blackguard!" spluttered Mr. Leslie. "So that's your game? You know she's an heiress! Think you have the whip-handle—bleed me or force her to marry you!—Alone with her after the other man—! You—you scoundrel! you blackguard! I'll—"

"Shut up!" commanded Blake, his voice low-pitched and hoarse, his face white to the lips. For the second time during the interview Mr. Leslie cringed before his look. His pale eyes were like balls of white-hot steel.

Slowly the glare faded from Blake's eyes, and the color returned to his bronzed face. He relaxed his fists.

"God!" he whispered huskily. "God! ... But you're her father!"

Something in his tone compelled conviction, despite Mr. Leslie's bitter prejudice. He jerked out reluctantly: "I'm not so sure—perhaps I spoke too—too hastily. But—the indications—"

"Needn't try to apologize," growled Blake.

"I'll not—in words. How about a twenty-five-thousand-dollar position?"

"What?" demanded Blake, astonished.

"That, as a beginning. If you prove yourself the kind of man I think you are,—the kind that can learn to run a railroad system,—I'll push you up the line to a hundred thousand, besides chances to come in on stock deals with George Ashton and myself."

"But if you think I'm a—"

"You're the only man that ever outfaced me in my own office. I'll chance the rest,—though I had your record looked up as soon as your name was cabled to me. I know not only who you are but what you are."

Blake bent forward, frowning. "I've stood about enough of this."

"Wait," said Mr. Leslie. "I'm not going to drag that in. I mention it only that you will understand without argument why my offer is based on the condition that you at once and for all time give over your ridiculous idea of becoming my son-in-law."

"You—mean—that—?"

"That I'd rather see my daughter in her grave than married to you. Is that plain enough? You're a good engineer—when you're not a drunkard."

For a moment Blake sat tense and silent. Then he replied steadily: "I haven't touched a drop of drink since that steamer piled up on that coral reef."

"Three months, at the outside," rejoined Mr. Leslie. "You've been known to go half a year. But always—"

"Yes, always before this try," said Blake. "It's different, though, now, with the backing of two such—ladies!"

"Two?" queried Mr. Leslie sharply.

"One's dead," replied Blake with simple gravity.

"H'm. I—it's possible I've misjudged you in some things. But this question of drink—I'll risk backing you in a business way, if it costs me a million. I owe you that much. But I won't risk my daughter's happiness—supposing you had so much as a shadow of a chance of winning her. No! You saved her life. You shall have no chance whatever to make her miserable. But I'll give you opportunities—I'll put you on the road to making your own millions."

Blake raised his cigar and flecked off the ash. "That for your damned millions!" he swore.

Mr. Leslie stared and muttered to himself: "Might have known it! Man of that kind. Crazy fool!"

"Fool?" repeated Blake contemptuously. "Just because money is your god, you needn't think it's everybody else's. You—money—hog! You think I'd sell out my chance of winning her!"

"You have no chance, sir! The thought of such a thing is absurd— ridiculous!"

"Well, then, why don't you laugh? No; you hear me. If I knew I didn't have one chance in a million, I'd tell you to take your offer and—"

"Now, now! make no rash statements. I'm offering you, to begin with, a twenty-five-thousand-dollar position, and your chance to acquire a fortune, if you—"

Blake's smouldering anger flared out in white heat. "Think you can bribe me, do you? Well, you can just take your positions and your dollars, and go clean, plumb to hell!"

"That will do, sir!—that will do!" gasped Mr. Leslie, shocked almost beyond speech.

"No, it won't do, Mr. H. V. Leslie!" retorted Blake. "I'm not one of your employees, to throw a fit when you put on the heavy pedal, and I'm not one of the lickspittles that are always baa-ing around the Golden Calf. You've had your say. Now I'll have mine. To begin with, let me tell you, I don't need your positions or your money. Griffith has given me work. I'm working for him, not you. Understand?"

"You are? He's my consulting engineer."

"That cuts no ice. I'm doing some work for him—for him; understand? It's not for you. He gave me the job—not you. After what you've said to me here, I wouldn't take a hundred-thousand-dollar job from you, not if I was walking around on my uppers. Understand?"

"But—but-"

Blake's anger burst out in volcanic rage. "That's it, straight! I don't want your jobs or your money. They're dirty! You've looked up my record, have you? How about your own? How about the Michamac Bridge? Griffith says the Coville Company has taken it over; but you started it—you called for plans—you advertised a competition. Where are my plans?—you!"

Mr. Leslie shrank back before the enraged engineer.

"Calm yourself, Mr. Blake!" he soothed in a quavering voice. "Calm yourself! This illusion of yours about lost plans—"

"Illusion?" cried Blake. "When I handed them in myself to your secretary—that dude, Ashton."

Mr. Leslie sat up, keenly alert. "To him? You say you handed in a set of bridge plans to my former secretary?"

"He wasn't a former secretary then."

"To young Ashton, at that time my secretary. Where was it?"

"In there," muttered Blake, jerking his thumb towards the empty anteroom. "I had to butt in to get even that far."

"Why didn't you show your receipt when you applied for your plans?"

"Hadn't a receipt."

"You didn't take a receipt?"

"And after that Q. T. survey, too!" thrust Blake. "I sure did play the fool, didn't I? But I was all up in the air over the way I had worked out that central span, and didn't think of anything but the committee you'd appointed to pass on the competing plans. Those judges were all right. I knew they'd be square."

"Sure you had any plans? Where's your proof?" demanded Mr. Leslie with a shrewdness that won a sarcastic grin from Blake.

"Don't fash yourself," he jeered. "You're safe—legally. Of course my scratch copy of them went down in the steamer. The fact I wrote Griffith about them before the contest wouldn't cut any ice—with your lawyers across the table from any I could afford to hire."

"Griffith knows about your plans?"

"Didn't get a chance to show them to him. All he knows is I wrote him I was drawing them to compete for the bridge—which of course was part of my plan to blackmail you," gibed Blake. He rose, with a look that was almost good-humored. "Well, guess we're through swapping compliments. I won't take up any of your valuable time discussing the weather."

With shrewd eyes blinking uneasily under their shaggy brows, Mr. Leslie watched his visitor cross towards the door. The engineer walked firmly and resolutely, with his head well up, yet without any trace of swagger or bravado.

As he reached for the doorknob, Mr. Leslie bent forward and called in an irritable tone: "Wait! I want to tell you—"

"Excuse me! My time's too valuable," rejoined Blake, and he swung out of the room.

Mr. Leslie sat for a few moments with his forehead creased in intent thought. He roused, to touch a button with an incisive thrust of his finger. To the clerk who came hastening in he ordered tersely: "Phone Griffith—appointment nine-fifteen to-morrow. Important."



CHAPTER IX

PLAYS FOR POSITION

About three o'clock of the same day a smart electric coupe whirled up Lake Shore Drive under a rattling fusillade of sleet from over the lake. At the entrance of the grounds of the Leslie mansion it curved around and shot in under the porte cochere.

A footman in the quiet dark green and black of the Leslie livery sprang out to open the coupe door, while the footman with the coupe, whose livery was not so quiet, swung down to hand out the occupants. Before the servant could offer his services, Dolores Gantry darted out past him and in through the welcome doorway of the side entrance. Her mother followed with stately leisure, regardless of a wind-flung dash of sleet on her sealskins.

Having been relieved of their furs, the callers were shown to the drawing-room. As the footman glided away to inform his mistress of their arrival, Dolores danced across to the door of the rear drawing- room and called in a clear, full-throated, contralto voice: "Ho, Vievie! Vievie! You in here? Hurry up! There's something I do so want to tell you."

Mrs. Gantry paused in the act of seating herself. "Dolores! Why must you shriek out like a magpie? Will you never forget you're a tomboy?"

"I'm not, mamma. I'm simply acting as if I were one. You forget I'm a full-blown debutante. Vievie has already promised me a ball."

"Behave yourself, if you wish to attend it."

Dolores jumped to a chair and sank into it with an air of elegant languor. "Yes, mamma. This—ah—driving in moist weather is so fatiguing, don't you find it?"

Mrs. Gantry disposed herself upon the comfortable seat that she had selected, and raised her gold lorgnette. "Do not forget that the ball Genevieve has so generously promised you is to be honored by the presence—"

"Of a real live earl and a real hero, with Laffie Ashton thrown in for good—I mean, bad—measure!" cut in Dolores with enthusiasm. "You know, I asked Vievie to 'put him on her list, else he never may be kissed!'"

Again Mrs. Gantry raised her lorgnette to transfix her daughter with her cold stare. "You asked her to invite Lafayette Ashton? And you know his reputation!"

"Of course. But you mustn't ask for the details, mamma," reproved the girl. "It's best that you should not become aware of such things, my dear. Only, you know, 'boys will be boys,' and we must not lose sight of the fact that poor dear Laffie will be worth twenty millions some day—if his papa doesn't make a will. Besides, he dances divinely. Of course Earl Jimmy's mustache is simply too cute for anything, but, alas! unless Vievie clings to her heroic Tommy—"

"Tommyrot!" sniffed Mrs. Gantry. "The presumption of that low fellow! To think of his following her to America!"

"You should have forewarned the authorities at Ellis Island, and had him excluded as dangerous—to your plans."

"No more of this frivolity! I've confided to you that that man is dangerous to Genevieve's happiness. I'll not permit it. What a fortunate chance that the earl came with him! I shall see to it that Genevieve becomes a countess."

Dolores pulled a mock-tragic face. "Oh, mamma," she implored, "why don't you root for me, instead? I'm sure a coronet would fit me to perfection, and his mustache is so cute!"

To judge by Mrs. Gantry's expression, it was fortunate for her daughter that Genevieve came in upon them. Dolores divined this last from the sudden mellowing of her mother's face. She whirled up out of her chair and around, with a cry of joyous escape: "Oh, Vievie! You're just in time to save me!"

"From what, dear?" asked Genevieve, smilingly permitting herself to be crumpled in an impetuous embrace.

"Mamma was just going to run the steam-roller over me, simply because I said Jimmy's mustache is cute. It is cute, isn't it?"

"'Jimmy'?" inquired Genevieve, moving to a chair beside Mrs. Gantry.

"His honorable earlship, then—since mamma is with us."

"You may leave the room," said her mother.

"I may," repeated the girl. She pirouetted up the room and stopped to look at a painting of a desolate tropical coast.

"It's such a dreadful day out, Aunt Amice," said Genevieve. "And you can't be rested from the trip."

"Quite true, my dear," agreed Mrs. Gantry. "But I had to see you—to talk matters over with you. I did not wish to break in on your enjoyment of those delightful English house parties; and crossing over, you know, I was too wretchedly ill to think of anything. Can I never get accustomed to the sea!"

"It's so unfortunate," condoled Genevieve. "I believe I'm a born sailor."

"You proved it, starting off with that globe-trotting Lady Bayrose."

"Poor Lady Bayrose! To think that she—" The girl pressed her hands to her eyes. "The way that frightful breaker whirled the boat loose and over and over!—and the water swarming with sharks!"

"Do not think of it, my dear! Really, you must not think of it!" urged Mrs. Gantry. "Be thankful it happened before the sailors had time to put you in the same boat. Better still, my dear, do not permit yourself to think of it at all. Put all that dreadful experience out of your mind."

"But you do not understand, Aunt Amice. I fear you never will. Except for that—for poor Lady Bayrose—I've told you, I do not wish to forget it."

"My dear!" protested Mrs. Gantry, "cannot you realize how very improper—? That man! What if he should talk?"

"Is there anything to be concealed?" asked Genevieve, with quiet dignity.

"You know how people misconstrue things," insisted her aunt. "That newspaper notoriety was quite sufficiently—It's most fortunate that Lord Avondale is not affected. I must admit, his attitude towards that man puzzles me."

"I can understand it very well," replied Genevieve, firmly.

"You both insist that the fellow is—is not absolutely unspeakable! I should never have thought it of you, Genevieve, nor of such a thorough gentleman as Lord Avondale—gentleman in our sense of the term,— refined, cultured, and clean. Were he one of the gentry who have reasons for leaving England,—who go West and consort with ruffians— remittance men—But no. Lady Chetwynd assured me he has been presented at Court, and you know the strictness of Queen Mary."

"You admit that Lord Avondale is, shall I say—perfect. Yet—"

"He is irreproachable, my dear, except as regards his extraordinary insistence upon an intimate friendship with that man."

"That is what confirms my good opinion of him, Aunt Amice."

"That!"

"It proves he is himself manly and sincere."

Mrs. Gantry raised a plump hand, palm outward. "Between the two of you—"

"We know Mr. Blake—the real man. You do not."

"I never shall. I will not receive him—never. He is impossible!"

"What! never?—the man who saved me from starvation, fever, wild beasts, from all the horrors of that savage coast?—the intimate friend of the Earl of Avondale?"

"Does he paint, Vievie?" called Dolores. "Is this a picture of your Crusoe coast?"

"No, dear. I bought that in New York. But it is very like the place where Tom—"

"'Tom'!" reproached Mrs. Gantry. She looked around at her daughter. "Dolores, I presumed you left us when I ordered you."

"Oh, no, not 'ordered,' mamma. You said 'may,' not 'must.'"

"Leave the room!"

The girl sauntered down towards the arched opening into the rear drawing-room. As she passed the others, she paused to pat her cousin's soft brown hair.

"I do believe the sun has burnt it a shade lighter, Vievie," she remarked. "What fun it must have been! When are you going to show me that leopard-skin gown?"

"Leave the room this instant!" commanded Mrs. Gantry.

Dolores crossed her hands on her bosom and crept out with an air of martyred innocence. Her mother turned to Genevieve for sympathy. "That girl! I don't know what ever I shall do with her—absolutely irrepressible! These titled Englishmen are so particular—she is your cousin."

Genevieve colored slightly. "You should know Lord Avondale better. If he is at all interested—"

"He is, most decidedly. He dined with us last evening. Laffie Ashton called; so I succeeded in getting the earl away from Dolores. We had a most satisfying little tete-a-tete. I led him into explaining everything."

"Everything?" queried Genevieve.

"Yes, everything, my dear. His aloofness since you reached Aden has been due merely to his high sense of honor,—to an absurd but chivalrous agreement with that fellow to not press his suit until after your arrival home. At Aden he had given the man his word—"

"At Aden?" interrupted Genevieve. "How could that be, when Tom left the ship at Port Mozambique?"

"He didn't. It seems that the fellow was aboard all the time, hiding in the steerage or stoke-hole, or somewhere—no doubt to spy on you and Lord Avondale."

Genevieve averted her head and murmured in a half whisper: "He was aboard all that time, and never came up for a breath of air all those smothering days! I remember Lord James speaking of how hot and vile it was down in the forecastle. This explains why he went forward so much!"

"It explains why he did not book passage with you from Aden—why he did not hasten to you at Lady Chetwynd's—all because of his chivalrous but mistaken sense of loyalty to that low fellow."

"If you please, Aunt Amice," said Genevieve, in a tone as incisive as it was quiet, "you will remember that I esteem Mr. Blake."

Mrs. Gantry stared over her half-raised lorgnette. She had never before known her niece to be other than the very pattern of docility.

"Well!" she remarked, and, after a little pause; "Fortunately, that absurd agreement is now at an end. The earl intimated that he would call on you this afternoon. I am sure, my dear—"

Of what the lady was sure was left to conjecture. The footman appeared in the hall entrance and announced: "Mr. Brice-Ashton."

Ashton came in, effusive and eager. "My dear Miss Genevieve! I—ah, Mrs. Gantry! Didn't expect to meet you here, such a day as this. Most unexpected—ah—pleasure! N'est-ce pas?—No, no! my dear Miss Leslie; keep your seat!"

Genevieve had seemed about to rise, but he quite deftly drew a chair around and sat down close before her. "I simply couldn't wait any longer. I felt I must call to congratulate you over that marvellous escape. It must have been terrible—terrible!"

Genevieve replied with perceptible coldness: "Thank you, Mr. Ashton. I had not expected a call from you."

"'Mr.' Ashton!" he echoed. "Has it come to that?—when we used to make mudpies together! Dolores said that you—"

"Not so fast, Laffie!" called the girl, as she came dancing into the room in her most animated manner. "Don't forget I'm Miss Gantry now."

Ashton continued to address Genevieve, without turning: "I came all the way down from Michamac just to congratulate you—left my bridge!"

"You're too sudden with your congratulations, Laffie," mocked Dolores. "Genevieve hasn't yet decided whether it's to be the hero or the earl."

"Dolores," admonished her mother. "I told you to leave the room."

"Yes, and forgot to tell me to stay out. It's no use now, is it? Unless you wish me to drag out Laffie for a little tete-a-tete in the conservatory."

"Sit down, dear," said Genevieve.

Mrs. Gantry turned to Ashton with a sudden unbending from hauteur. "My dear Lafayette, I observed your manner yesterday towards that—towards Mr. Blake. Am I right in surmising that you know something with regard to his past?"

"About Blake?" replied Ashton, his usually wide and ardent eyes shifting their glance uneasily from his questioner to Genevieve and towards the outer door.

"About my friend Mr. Blake," said Genevieve.

"You call him a friend?—a fellow like that!" Ashton rashly exclaimed.

"He has proved himself a disinterested friend,—which I cannot say of all with whom I am acquainted."

"Oh, of course, if you feel that way."

"My other friends will remember that he saved my life."

"If only he had been a gentleman!" sighed Mrs. Gantry.

"Yes, Vievie," added Dolores. "Next time any one goes to save you, shoo him off unless he first offers his card."

"Mr. Blake is what many a seeming gentleman is not," said Genevieve, her levelled glance fixed upon Ashton. "Tom Blake is a man, a strong, courageous man!"

"We quite agree with you," ventured Ashton. "He is a man of the type one so frequently sees among firemen and the police."

Mrs. Gantry intervened with quick tact: "Mr. Blake is quite an eminent civil engineer, we understand. As a fellow engineer, you have met him, I dare say—have had dealings with him."

"I?—with him? No—that is—" Ashton stammered and shifted about uneasily under Genevieve's level gaze. "It was only when I was acting as Mr. Leslie's secretary. Blake handed me the bridge plans that he afterwards claimed were lost. I tell you, I had nothing to do with them—nothing! I merely received them from him. That was all. I went away the very next day—resigned my position. I don't know what became of his plans,—nothing whatever! I tell you, the Michamac Bridge—"

"Why, Lame!" giggled Dolores. "What makes you squirm so? You're twitching all over. I thought you'd had enough of the simple life at Michamac to recover from the effects of that corner in oats. You haven't started another corner already, have you?"

"No, I have—I mean, yes—just a few cocktails at the club—yes, that's it. So bitter cold, this sleet! You'll understand, Mrs. Gantry —perhaps one too much. Haven't had any since I went back to the bridge last time."

"Then up at Michamac you take it straight?" asked Dolores.

Ashton forced a nervous laugh. "Keep it up, Dodie! You'll make a wit yet." He bent towards Genevieve. "You'll pardon me, won't you, Genevieve?"

The girl raised her fine brows ever so slightly. "'Miss Leslie,' if you please."

"Of course—of course! Just another slip—that last cocktail and the sleet. Wet cold always sends it to my head. That about Blake, too—I oughtn't to 've spoken of it after you said he was your friend. It's, of course, your father's affair."

"Then you need say no more about it," said Genevieve with ironical graciousness. He shifted about in his chair, and she caught him deftly. "Must you be going?—really! Good-day."

He rose uncertainly to his feet, his handsome face flushed, and his full red lower lip twitching.

"I—I had not intended—" he began.

"Good-day!" said Mrs. Gantry with significant emphasis.

"So sorry you must rush off so soon, Laffie," mocked Dolores.

Social training has its value. Ashton pulled himself together, bowed gracefully, and started up the room with easy assurance.

As he neared the doorway, the footman appeared and announced with unction: "The Right Honorable, the Earl of Avondale."

Ashton stopped short, and when the Englishman entered, met him with an effusive greeting: "Mon Dieu! Such a fortunate chance, your lordship! So glad to meet you again,—and here, of all places! Don't forget to look me up at my clubs."

"Hearts are trumps, Laffie—not clubs," called Dolores, as Lord James passed him by with a vague nod.



CHAPTER X

THE SHADOW OF DOUBT

Before the earl had reached them Mrs. Gantry was rising.

Genevieve rose to protest. "You're not going so soon, Aunt Amice? You'll stay for a cup of tea?"

"Not to-day, my dear. Ah, earl! you're just in time to relieve Genevieve from the ennui of a solitary afternoon. I regret so much that we cannot stay with you. Come, Dolores."

Dolores settled back comfortably on her chair. "Go right on, mamma. Don't wait for me. I'll stay and help Vievie entertain Lord Avondale."

"Come—at once."

"Oh, fudge! Well, start on. I'll catch you."

Mrs. Gantry stepped past Lord James. Genevieve met his eager glance, and hastened to overtake her aunt. "Really, won't you stay, Aunt Amice? I'll have tea brought in at once."

"So sorry, my dear," replied Mrs. Gantry, placidly sailing on towards the reception hall.

Dolores simulated a yawn. "O-o-ho! I'm so tired. Will nobody help me get up?"

With a boyish twinkle in his gray eyes but profound gravity In his manner, Lord James offered her his hand. She placed her fingers in his palm and sprang up beside him. The others were still moving up the room. She surprised him by meeting his amused gaze with an angry flash of her big black eyes.

"Shame!" she flung at him. "You, his friend, and would take her from him!"

He stared blankly. The girl whirled away from him with a swish of silken skirts and fled past her mother, all her anger lost in wild panic.

"Dolores! Whatever can—" cried Mrs. Gantry. But Dolores had vanished. "Really, Genevieve, that madcap girl—! About yourself, my dear. Promise me now, if you cannot say 'yes,' at least you'll not make it a final 'no.'"

"But, Aunt Amice, unless I feel—"

"Promise me! You must give yourself time to make sure. He will wait. I am certain he will wait until you have found out—"

"I cannot promise anything now," replied Genevieve.

Mrs. Gantry did not press the point. It was the second time during the call that her niece had proved herself less docile than she had expected. As she left the room, Genevieve returned to Lord James without any outward sign of hesitancy. She seated herself and smiled composedly at her caller, who still stood in the daze into which Dolores's outburst had thrown him.

"Won't you sit down?" she invited. "How is Mr. Blake?"



With rather an abstracted air, Lord James sank down on the chair opposite her and began fiddling with the cord of his monocle.

"Haven't seen him since yesterday," he replied, "Left him at the office of a Mr. Griffith—engineer—old friend. Gave him work immediately—something big, I take it. Asked Tom to bunk with him."

"It's so good to hear he has work already—and to stay with a friend! You mean, live with him?"

"Yes."

"He—the friend—seems desirable?"

"Decidedly so, I should say. Engineer who first started him on his career, if I remember aright what Tom once told me of his early life."

"Oh, that is such good news! But have you seen him since—since this morning? He had that appointment with papa, you know."

"No, I regret to say I haven't; and I fear I cannot reassure you as to the outcome. You know Tom's way; and your father, I take it, is rather—It would seem that they had a disagreement before Tom went West the last time."

"Yes. He once referred to it. Some misunderstanding with regard to the payment of a railway survey. I asked papa about it last evening, and he told me that it had been made all right—that Tom would get his pay for his share in the survey."

"Little enough, in the circumstances," remarked Lord James.

"That was not all. Papa promised to give him a very good position. He had intended to offer money. But I explained to him that, of course, Tom would not accept money."

"Very true. I doubt if he would have accepted it even had it not been for his hope that—" Lord James paused and stared glumly at his finger-tips. "Bally mess, deuce take it! He and your father at outs, and he and I—"

"You have not quarrelled? You're still friends?" exclaimed Genevieve.

"Quarrelled? No, I assure you, no! Yet am I his friend? Permit me to be candid, Miss Leslie. I'm in a deuce of a quandary. On the trip up to Aden, you'll remember, I told you something of the way he and I had knocked about together."

"Yes. Frankly, it added not a little to my esteem for you that you had learned to value his sterling worth."

"I did not tell you how it started. It was in the Kootenay country— British Columbia, you know. Bunch of sharpers set about to rook me on a frame-up—a bunco game. Tom tipped me off, though I had snubbed him, like the egregious ass I was. I paid no heed; blundered into the trap. Wouldn't have minded losing the thousand pounds they wanted, but they brought a woman into the affair—made it appear as if I were a cad—or worse."

"Surely not that, Lord James. No one could believe that of you."

"You don't know the beastly cleverness of those bunco chaps. They had me in a nasty hole, when Tom stepped in and showed them up. Seems he knew more about the woman and two of the men than they cared to have published. They decamped."

"That was so like Tom!" murmured Genevieve.

"Claimed he did it because of an old grudge against the parties. Had to force my thanks on him. Told you how we'd chummed together since. Deuce take it! why should it have been you on that steamer—with him?"

"Why?" echoed Genevieve, gazing down at her clasped hands, which still showed a trace of tropical tan.

"You know it—it puts me in rather a nasty box," went on Lord James. "Had I not met you before he did, it is possible that I could have avoided—You see my predicament. He and I've been together so much, I can foresee the effect on him of—er—of a great disappointment."

Genevieve gazed up at him with startled eyes. "Lord James, you must explain that; you must be explicit."

"I—I did not intend to so much as mention it," stammered the young Englishman, bitterly chagrined at himself. "It was only—pray, do not ask me, Miss Leslie!"

"You referred, of course, to his drinking," said Genevieve, in a tone as tense as it was quiet. "Do not reproach yourself. When we were cast ashore together, he was—not himself. But when I remember all those weeks that followed—! You cannot imagine how brave and resolute, how truly courageous he was!—and under that outward roughness, how kind and gentle!"

"I too know him. That's what makes it so hard. The thought that I may possibly cause him a disappointment that may result in—" Lord James came to a stop, tugging at his mustache.

Genevieve was again staring at the slender little hands, from which the most expert manicuring had not yet entirely removed all traces of rough usage.

"He told me something of—of what he had to fight," she murmured in a troubled voice. "But I feel that—that if something came into his life—" She blushed, but went on bravely—"something to take him out of what he calls the grind—"

Lord James had instantly averted his gaze from her crimsoning face.

"That's the worst of it!" he burst out. "If only I could feel sure that he—I've seen him fight—Gad! how he has fought—time and again. Yet sooner or later, always the inevitable defeat!"

"I cannot believe it! I cannot!" insisted Genevieve. "With his strength, his courage! It's only been the circumstances; that he has had nobody to—I—I beg your pardon! Of course you—What I mean is somebody who—" She buried her face in her hands, blushing more vividly than before.

The Englishman's face lightened. "Then you've not let my deplorable blunder alter your attitude towards him?"

"Not in the slightest."

He leaned forward. "Then—I can wait no longer! You must know how greatly I—All those days coming up to Aden I could say nothing. Before coming aboard, he had told me why he could not permit you to— to commit yourself irrevocably."

He paused. Genevieve bent over lower. She did not speak.

He went on steadily: "It was then I realized fully his innate fineness. I own it astonished me, well as I thought I knew him. With his brains, his 'grit,' and that, I'd say he could become anything he wished—were it not for his—for the one weakness."

Genevieve flung up her head, to gaze at him in indignant protest. "Weakness! How can you say that? He is so strong—so strong!"

"In all else than that," insisted Lord James. "You must face the hard fact. Gad! this is far worse than I thought it would be. But I knew you before he did, and I've played fair with him. It was not easy to say nothing those days before we reached Aden, or to stay away from you after I reached home. Even he could not have found it so hard. He has all that stubborn power of endurance; while I—"

"You have no cause to reproach yourself. I cannot say how greatly it pleased me that you took him to Ruthby Castle."

"Could you but have been there, too! He and the pater hit it off out of hand. Jolly sensible chap, the pater—quiet, bookish—long head."

"He must be!"

"Not strange about Tom, though. It's odd how his bigness makes itself felt—to those who've any sense of judgment. And yet it's not so odd, when you come to think. My word! if only it were not for his—Forgive me, Miss Genevieve! I've the right to consider what it might mean to you. It gives me the right to speak for myself. He himself insisted that, in justice to you, I should not withdraw."

"Lord James!"

"Pray, do not misunderstand, Miss Genevieve. He knew what it meant to me. But our first thought was for you. He wished you to have the full contrast of your own proper environment, that you might regain your perspective—the point of view natural to one of your position."

"He could think I'd go back to the shams and conventions, after those weeks of real life!"

"Sometimes life is a bit too real in the most conventional of surroundings," said his lordship, with a rueful smile. "No. He saw that you had no right to commit yourself then; that you should reconsider matters in the environment in which you belong and for which he is not now fitted—whatever may be the outcome of his efforts to make himself fit."

"He will succeed!"

"He may succeed. I should not have the slightest hesitancy in saying that success would be certain, were it not for that one flaw. It's not to be held against him—an inherited weakness."

"Do you not believe we can overcome heredity?"

"In some cases, I daresay. But with him—You must bear in mind I've seen the futility of his struggle. All his resolution and courage and endurance seem to count for nothing. But it's too painful! Can't we leave him out of this? You are aware that I missed my opportunity when Lady Bayrose changed her plans and rushed you off on the other ship. After that you may imagine how difficult I found it to say nothing, do nothing, coming up to Aden."

"Please, please say no more!" begged Genevieve, her eyes bright with tears of distress. "I regard you too highly. You have my utmost esteem, my respect and friendship, my—you see he has taught me to be sincere—you have my affection. Dear friend, I shall be perfectly candid. I was a silly girl. I had never sensed the realities of life. I had a young girl's covetousness of a coronet—of a title. Yet that was not all. I felt a warm regard for you. Had you spoken before I met him, before I learned to know him—"

"Before you knew him? Then you still—? The contrast of civilization— of your own environment—has made no difference?"

"I do not say that. Yet it is not in the manner you suppose." She looked away, with a piteous attempt to smile. "It's strange how much pain can be caused by the slightest shadow of a doubt."

"Miss Genevieve! I—I shall never be able to forgive myself! For me to have said a word—it was despicable!"

"No, do not say it. Can you think me capable of misunderstanding? Dear friend, I esteem you all the more for what I know it must have cost you. But no; what I spoke of was something that was already in my own mind."

"Ah—then you, too—Miss Genevieve, it's been so good of you. Let me beg that you do not consider this as final."

"But I can promise you nothing. It would not be right to you."

"I ask only that you do not consider this final. You have admitted a shadow of a doubt. With your permission, I propose to wait until you have solved that doubt. You have given me cause to hope that, were it not for him—"

"It is not right for me to give you the slightest hope."

"But I take it. Meantime, no more annoyance to you. We'll be jolly good friends, no more. You take me?"

"I'll ring for tea. You deserve it."

"No objections, I assure you. I'll serve as stopgap till Tom turns up."

Genevieve rose quickly, her color deepening. "He is coming?—this afternoon!"

"I should not have been surprised had I found him here. And now—" He glanced at his watch. "It's already half after four."

"Oh, and papa said he'd be home early to-day!—though his custom is to come barely in time to dress for dinner."

"Hope Tom hit it off with him this morning—but—" Lord James shook his head dubiously—"I fear he was not in a conciliatory mood."



CHAPTER XI

REBELLION

Genevieve rang for tea, and changed the conversation to impersonal topics. A footman brought in a Russian samovar and a service of eggshell china. They sipped their tea and chatted lightly about English acquaintances, but with frequent glances towards the hall entrance. Each was wondering which one would be first to come, Blake or Mr. Leslie.

The conversation had languished to a mere pretext when Blake was announced. The engineer entered slowly, his face red and moist from the fierce drive of the sleet off the lake. He had come afoot.

Genevieve placed a trembling hand on the cover of her samovar, and called to him gayly: "Hurry here at once and have a good hot cup of tea. You must be frozen."

Blake came to them across the waxed floor with an ease and assurance of step in part due to his visit to Ruthby Castle and in part to his walk over the sleet-coated pavements.

"No tea for me, Miss Jenny," he replied with cheerful heartiness. "Thanks, just the same. But I'm warm as toast—look it, too, eh?"

"Then take it to cool you off," suggested Lord James. "That's the Russian plan. When you're cold, hot tea to warm you; when you're hot, hot tea to cool you."

"Not when water tastes good to me," replied Blake with a significance that did not escape his friend. "Well, Jimmy, so you beat me to it."

"Waited till after three," said Lord James.

"Thought you'd hang back to give me the start? Went you one better, eh?" replied Blake. He stared fixedly into the handsome high-bred face of his friend and then at Genevieve's down-bent head. "Well? What's the good word? Is it—congratulations?"

"Not this time, old man," answered the Englishman lightly. He rose. "Take my seat. Must be going."

Blake's eyes glowed. "You're the gamest ever, Jimmy boy."

"Don't crow till you're out of the woods," laughed his friend. "Can't wish you success, y'know. But it's to continue the same between us as it has been, if you're willing."

"That's like you, Jimmy!"

"To be sure. But I really must be going. Good-day, Miss Genevieve."

The girl looked up without attempting to conceal her affection and sympathy for him.

"Dear friend," she said, "before you go, I wish to tell you how highly I value and appreciate—"

"No more, no more, I beg of you," he protested, with genial insistence. "Tom, I'll be dropping in on you at your office."

He bowed to Genevieve, and still cloaking his hurt with a cheerful smile, started to leave them. At the same moment Mr. Leslie came hurrying into the room. The sight of Lord James brought him to a stand.

"H'm!" he coughed. "So it's you, Lord Avondale? Hodges said—" His keen eyes glanced past the Englishman to the big form across the corner of the table from Genevieve. "What! Right, was he?—Genevieve."

"Yes, papa?" replied the girl, looking at Blake with a startled gaze. She was very pale, but her delicately curved lips straightened with quiet determination. She did not rise.

"Er—glad to meet you again so soon, Mr. Leslie," said Lord James, deftly placing himself so that the other could not avoid his proffered hand without marked discourtesy. Mr. Leslie held out his flaccid fingers. They were caught fast and retained during a cordial and prolonged handshake.

"When we first met," went on his lordship suavely, "time was lacking for me to congratulate you on the fact that your daughter came through her terrible experience so well. She has assured me that she feels all the better for it. Only one, like myself, accustomed to knocking about the tropics, can fully realize the extraordinary resourcefulness and courage of the man who had the good fortune to bring her through it all safely and, as she says, bettered."

"Yes, yes, we all know that, and admit it," replied the captive, attempting to free his hand.

Lord James gave it a final wring. "To be sure! You, of all men, will bear in mind what he accomplished. Yet I must insist that my own appreciation is no less keen. It is the greatest satisfaction to me that I am privileged to call Thomas Blake my friend."

"Your friend has put me under obligations," answered Mr. Leslie. "I have acknowledged to him that I owe him a heavy debt for what he has done. I stand ready to pay him for his services, whenever he is ready to accept payment."

"Ah, indeed," murmured Lord James. "'Pon my word, now, that's what I call deuced generous."

"No; that's not the question at all. It's merely a matter of a business settlement for services rendered," replied Mr. Leslie.

"Yet one does not—er—value gratitude in pounds and dollars, y' know."

"No, no, of course you do not, papa!" exclaimed Genevieve. "Please remember—please try to consider—"

She would better have remained silent. Her evident concern alarmed her father to the point of exasperation.

"I am considering how this friend of Lord Avondale's bore himself towards me, in my office, this morning," he interrupted her. He turned again to Lord James. "I should not need to tell you, sir, that the manner of expressing gratitude depends altogether on the circumstances. We are now, however, considering another matter. You were about to leave—You will always be welcome to my house, Lord Avondale, and so will be your friends, when they come and go with you."

"Father!" protested Genevieve, rising to face him.

"My mistake, Miss Jenny," said Blake, coolly drawing himself up beside her. "I thought it was your house."

He swung about to Mr. Leslie, and said, with unexpected mildness: "Don't worry; I'm going. We don't want to fuss here, do we?—to make it any harder for her. But first, there's one thing. You're her father—I want to say I'm sorry I cut loose this morning."

"What! you apologize?"

"As to what I said about my bridge plans—yes. If you had left out about—If you hadn't rubbed it in so hard about me and—You know what I mean. It made me red-hot. I couldn't help cutting loose. But, just the same, I oughtn't to've said that about the plans, because—well, because, you see, I don't believe it."

"You don't? Then why—?"

"I did believe it before. I believed it this morning, when I was mad. But I've had time to cool off and think it over. Queer thing—all the evidence and probabilities are there, just the same; but somehow I can't believe it of you any longer—simply can't. You're her father."

"H'm—this puts a different face on the matter," admitted Mr. Leslie. "I begin to think that I may have been rather too hasty. Had you been more conciliatory, less—h'm—positive, I'm inclined to believe that we—"

"I don't care what you believe," was Blake's brusque rejoinder. "I'm not trying to curry favor with you. Understand? Come on, Jimmy."

But Genevieve was at his elbow, between him and the door.

"You are not going now, Tom," she said.

"Genevieve," reproved her father. "This is most unlike you."

"Unlike my former frivolous, pampered self!" cried the girl. "I'm no longer a silly debutante, papa. I've lived the grim hard realities of life—there on that dreadful coast—with him. I'm a woman."

"You child! You're not even twenty-one."

"I am old—older than the centuries, papa—old enough to know my own mind." She turned to Blake. "You were right, Tom. This is my home— legally mine. You are welcome to stay."

"Mr. Leslie!" interposed Lord James, before her father could reply. "One moment, if you please. I have told you that Mr. Blake and I are friends. More than that, we are intimate friends—chums. I wish to impress on you the very high esteem in which I hold him, the more than admiration—"

"Chuck it, Jimmy," put in Blake.

Lord James concluded in a tone of polite frigidity. "And since you place conditions on his welcome to your house, permit me to remark that I prefer his acquaintance to yours." He bowed with utmost formality.

"H'm!" rasped Mr. Leslie. "You should understand, sir. Had you not interrupted me—" He abruptly faced Blake. "You, at least, will understand my position—that I have some reason—It is not that I wish to appear discourteous, even after this morning. You've apologized; I cannot ask you to go—I do not ask you to go. Yet—"

"If you please, papa," said Genevieve with entrancing sweetness.

"Well?"

"Isn't it time for you to dress?"

"No—came home early," replied Mr. Leslie, jerking out his watch. He searched his daughter's face with an apprehensive glance, and again addressed Blake. "Too early. There's time for a run out to George Ashton's. Want to see him on a matter of business. Valuable acquaintance for you to make. Jump into the runabout with me, and I'll introduce you to him."

"Thanks," said Blake dryly. "Not to-day."

"Mr. Blake has just come, papa," said Genevieve. "You would not deprive us of the pleasure of a little visit."

"H'm. By cutting it close, I can wait a few minutes."

"You need not trouble to wait, papa. You can introduce him to Mr. Ashton some other time."

"May I offer myself as a substitute?" put in Lord James. "Mrs. Gantry has told me so much about the elder Mr. Ashton. Quite curious to meet him."

Blandly taking Mr. Leslie's assent as a matter of course, he started toward the door. "Good-day, Miss Leslie. Ah—do we go out this way? Can't tell you how I value the opportunity. Very good of you, very!"

"Wait," said Mr. Leslie. "Genevieve, haven't you an engagement out, this afternoon?"

"If I had a dozen, papa, I should not deprive Mr. Blake of his call."

"Mr. Blake is welcome to his call. But—since you force me to say it— I must expressly tell you, it is my wish that you should not see him alone."

"I'm very sorry, papa, that you should forbid me," said Genevieve with a quiet tensity that should have forewarned him.

"Sorry?"

"Yes, papa, because, if you insist, I shall have to disobey you."

"You will?"

He stared at her, astounded, and she sustained his gaze with a steadiness that he perceived could not be shaken.

Lord James again interposed. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Leslie, if I may seem to interfere. But as he is my friend, I, too, request you—"

"You?" exclaimed Mr. Leslie, with fresh astonishment. "You also side with him?—when my sister-in-law tells me—"

"That is all by-the-bye, I assure you, sir. The least I can do for the man who saved her life is to play fair. Permit me to say that you can do no less."

Mr. Leslie looked at Genevieve with a troubled frown.

"At least, my dear, I hope you'll remember who you are," he said.

She made no reply, but stood white-faced and resolute until he went from the room. Lord James followed close after him.

Blake and Genevieve were left alone.



CHAPTER XII

THE DEEPENING OF DOUBT

Blake stood as motionless as a carved figure, his eyes glowing upon the girl, blue and radiant with tenderness and compassion and profound love.

The clang of a heavy door told her that her father had left the house. On the instant all her firmness left her. She hid her face in her hands and sank into the nearest chair, quivering and weeping, in silent anguish.

Blake came near and stood over her. He spoke to her in a voice that was deep and low and very soft: "There, there, little girl, don't you mind! Just cry it out. It'll do you good. You know I understand. Have a good cry!"

The sympathetic urging to give way freely to her weeping almost immediately soothed her grief and checked the flow of tears. She rose uncertainly, dabbing at her eyes.

"I—I couldn't help it, Tom. It's the fi-first time papa's ever been so cross with me!"

"My fault, I guess. Rubbed his fur the wrong way this morning pretty hard. But don't you fret, girlie. It'll be all right. Only we mustn't blame him. Think of what it means to him. You're all he has, and if he thinks you're—if he thinks he's going to lose you—"

"But it was so cruel!—so unjust!—the way he treated you!"

"Oh, that's all right, little woman. I don't mind that. We'll all forget it by to-morrow. He didn't mean half he said. It was just the thought that I—that somebody might take you away from him. Jenny!" His eyes glowed upon her blue as sapphires. "You're home now."

He held his arms open for her to come to him. She swayed forward as if to give herself into the clasp of those strong arms, but instantly checked the movement and shrank back a little way.

"Wait, Tom," she murmured hesitatingly. "We must first—"

"Wait longer, Jenny?" he exclaimed, his deep voice vibrant with the intensity of his feeling. "No, I must say it! I've waited all these weeks—good Lord!—when maybe you've thought it was because I didn't want to—to do as you asked!"

"It's not that, Tom, truly it's not that. I was hurt and—shamed. But even then I divined why you had done it and realized the nobility of your motive."

"Nobility? That's a good joke! You know I was only trying to do the square thing. Any man would have done the same."

"Any man would. I'm not so certain as to some who call themselves gentlemen."

"There're some who're real gentlemen—worse luck to me—Jimmy, for one. I can never catch up with him in that line, girlie, but I can make a stagger at it."

"You can become anything you will, Tom," she said with calm conviction.

"Maybe," he replied. "But, Jenny, I can't wait for that. Wish I could. I'm still only—what you know. Same time, you're back home now, and you've been visiting with your titled friends. Also you've seen how your father looks at it, and how—"

"What does all that amount to—even papa's anger? If only that were all!"

"Jenny! then you still—?" His voice quivered with passion. "My little girl!—how I love you! God I how I love you! I never thought much of girls, but I loved you the first time I ever set eyes on you, there in the Transvaal. That's why I threw up the management of the mine. I knew who your father was; I knew I hadn't a ghost of a show. But I followed you to Cape Town—couldn't help it!"

"You—you old silly!" she murmured, half frightened by the greatness of his passion. "You should have known I was only a shallow society girl!"

"Shallow?—you? You're deep as blue water!"

"The ocean is fickle."

"You're not; you're true! You've lived! I've seen you face with a smile what many a man would have run from."

"Because with me was one who would have died sooner than that harm should come to me! Those weeks, those wonderful weeks that we lived, so close to primitive, savage Nature—bloody fanged Nature!—those weeks that I stood by your side and saw her paint for us her beautiful, terrible pictures of Life, pictures whose blue was the storm-wave and the sky veiled with fever-haze, whose white was the roaring surf and the glare of thunderbolts, whose red was fire and blood! And you saved me from all—all! I had never even dreamt that a man could be so courageous, so enduring, so strong!"

His face clouded, and he gave back before her radiant look.

"Strong?" he muttered. "That's the question. Am I?"

"Of course you are! I'm sure you are. You must be. It was that which compelled my—which made me—" She paused, and a swift blush swept over her face from forehead to throat—"made me propose to you, there on the cliff, when the steamer came."

"That a lady should have loved me like that!" he murmured. "I still can't believe it was true! My little girl, it's not possible—not possible!"

"You say 'loved,'" she whispered. Her eyelids fluttered and drooped before his ardent gaze; her scarlet face bent downward; she held out her hands to him in timid surrender.

He caught them between his big palms, but not to draw her to him. A jagged mark on her round wrist caught his eye. It was the scar of a vicious thorn. The last time he had seen it was on the cliff top,— that other time when she put out her arms to him. He bent over and kissed the red scar.

"Jenny," he replied in bitter self-reproach, "here's another time I've proved I'm not in your class—not a gentleman. You've raised a point— the real point. Am I what you think me? You think I'm at least a man. Am I?"

She looked up at him, her face suddenly gone white again. "Tom! You don't mean—?"

"About my being strong. All that you've seen so far are my leading suits. There's that other to be reckoned with yet. I told your father I hadn't touched a drop since the wreck. But you know how it was before."

"Yes, dear, but that was before!"

"I know. Things are different now. I've something at stake that'll help me fight. You can't guess, though, how that craving—Lucky I'll have Jimmy, as well, to back me up. He's great when it comes to jollying a fellow over the bumps. He'll help."

"It's little enough, after all you've done for him! He told me."

"Just like him. But let's not get sidetracked. What I wanted to make clear is that I'm not so everlastingly strong as you seem to think."

"Tom, you'll not give way! You'll fight!"

"Yes, I'll fight," he responded soberly.

"And you'll win!"

"I hope so, girlie. I've fought it before, and it has downed me, time and again. But now it's different—unless you've found you were mistaken. But if you still feel as when you—as you did there on the cliff that morning—Good God! how could I lose out, with you backing me up?"

She looked at him with a quick recurrence of doubt. "You ask help of me?"

"If you care enough, Jenny. It's not going to be a joke. I've tried before, and gone under so many times that some people would say I've no show left. But let me tell you, girlie, I'm going to fight this time for all I'm worth. I'm going to break this curse if I can. It is a curse, you'll remember. I told you about my mother."

"You should not think of that. What does heredity count as against environment!"

"Environment?—heredity? By all accounts, my father was the man you've thought me, and a lot more—railroad engineer; nerviest man ever ran an engine out of Chicago on the Pennsylvania Line; American stock from way back—Scotch-Irish; sober as a church, steady, strong as a bull. Never an accident all the years he pulled the fast express till the one that smashed him. Could have jumped and saved himself—stayed by his throttle, and saved the train. They brought him home—what was left of him. Papers headlined him; you know how they do it. That was my father."

"Oh, Tom! and with such a father!"

"Wait a minute. You spoke of heredity and environment. I'm giving you all sides, except anything more about my mother. Her father was a cranky inventor ... Well, inside six months we were living in a tenement. I was a little shaver of six. The younger of my sisters was a baby. Talk about environment! Wasn't many years before I was known as the toughest kid in Rat Alley."

"Don't dwell on that, Tom. Don't even speak of it," begged Genevieve.

He shook his head. "I want you to know just what I've been. It's your right to know. I wasn't one of the nasty kind and I wasn't a sneak. But I was the leader of my gang. Maybe you know what that means. Of course the police got it in for me. Finally they made it so hot I had to get out of Chicago. I took to the road—became a bum."

"Not that!—surely not that!"

"Well, no, only a kid hobo. But I'd have slid on down if I hadn't dropped into a camp of surveyors who were heading off into the mountains and had need of another man. Griffith, the engineer in charge, talked me into joining the party as axman. I took a fancy to him. He proved himself the first real friend I'd ever had—or was to have till I met Jimmy Scarbridge."

"A man's worth is measured by the friends he makes," she observed.

"Not always. Well, Griffith got me interested. I joined the party. Whew!—seven months in the mountains, and not a saloon within fifty miles any of the time. But I stuck it out. Nobody ever called me a quitter."

"And now, Tom, you'll not quit! You'll win!"

"I'll try—for you, girlie! You can't guess how that braces me—the thought that it's for you! You see, I'm beginning to count on things now. I'm not even afraid of your money now. Good old Grif—Griffith, you know—has given me a shy at a peach of a proposition—toughest problem I was ever up against. It's a big irrigation dam that has feazed half a dozen good engineers."

"But you'll solve the problem! You can do anything!"

"I'm not so sure, Jenny. I've only begun to dig into the field books. Even if I do make a go of it in the end, chances are I'll have to work like—like blazes to get there. But that'll help me on this other fight—help choke down the craving when it comes. A whole lot turns on that dam. If I make good on it, I'm made myself. Tack up my ad. as consulting engineer, and I'll have all the work I want. Won't be ashamed to look your three millions in the face."

"My money! Can you still believe that counts with me? Money! It is what we are ourselves that counts. If you acquired all the money in the world, yes, and all the fame, but failed to master yourself, you'd not be the man I thought you—the man whom I—whom I said I loved."

"Jenny! Then it's gone—you no longer care?"

"You have no right to ask anything of me until you've—"

"I'm not, Jenny! Don't think it for a moment. I'm not asking anything now. I wanted to wait. It's only that I want you to know how I love you. I wouldn't dream of asking you to—to marry me now—no, not till I've won out, made good. Understand? All I want is for you to wait for me till I've made my name as an A-1 engineer and until I've downed that cursed craving for drink."

"You will, Tom—you must!"

"With you to back me, little woman! Yes, I guess I can make it this time, with you waiting for me!"

Genevieve met his smile and enthused gaze with a look of firm decision. Her doubt and hesitancy had at last crystallized into a set purpose. She replied in a tone that rang with a hardness new to him: "No. It must be more than that."

"More?" he asked, surprised.

"More, much more. That morning, after I so shamelessly forced you to listen to me, nothing could have altered my purpose had you come aboard the steamer with me."

"But I couldn't then. 'T wouldn't have been fair to you."

"Yet it might have been wise. Who knows? At the least, the question would have been settled 'for better or for worse.' It is easier to face the trouble which one cannot escape than deliberately to make choice of entering into the state that may or may not bring about the dreaded misfortune. Had you married me then, Tom, I would surely have been happy for a time. But now—you have made me believe that you were right."

Blake drew back from her, his head downbent in sudden despondency. "So you've found out you don't feel the same?"

Her eyes dimmed with tears of compassion for him, but her voice was as firm as before. "I loved Tom Blake because he was so manly, so strong! I still love that Tom Blake. You are not sure that you are strong."

"But if I knew I had your love back of me, Jenny!"

"That's it—you wish to lean on me! It's weak; it's not like you. You won my love by your courage, your resolution, your strength! All my love for you is based on your strength. If that fails—if you prove weak—how am I to tell whether my love will endure?"

"I'll win out. I know I can win out if I have you to fight for."

"If you have me to lean on! No; you must prove yourself stronger than that. I had no doubts then. I urged you to marry me—flung myself at you. But now, after what I've been forced to realize since then—"

She stopped short, leaving him to infer the rest. He took it at the worst. He replied despairingly yet without a trace of bitterness: "Yes, you'd better take Jimmy. He's your kind."

"Tom! How can you? I've a great esteem for Lord James, I like him very much, but—"

"He's the right sort. You could count on being happy with him," stated Blake, in seeming resignation. She looked at him, puzzled and hurt by his calmness. The look fired him to a passionate outburst. "Don't you think it, though! He's not going to have you! I can't give you up! I'm going to win you. My God! I love you so much I'd try to win you—I'd have to win you, even if I thought you'd be unhappy!"

Her voice softened with responsive tenderness. "Oh, Tom, if only I knew we would have—would have and keep that great love that covers all things! I'd rather be miserable with you than happy without you!"

"Jenny! you do love me!" he cried, advancing with outstretched arms.

She drew back from him. "Not now—not now, Tom!"

He smiled, only slightly dashed. "Not now, but when I've made good. You'll wait for me! I can count on that!"

"No," she answered with utmost firmness.

"Jenny!"

"I'll make no promise—not even a conditional one. You must make this fight without leaning on any one. I must know whether you are strong, whether you are the real Tom Blake I love."

"But I'm not asking anything—only in case I make good."

"No; I'll not bind myself in any way. I'll not promise to marry you even if you should win. It was you who made me wait, and now I shall make sure. Unless I feel certain that we would be bound together for all time by the deepest, truest love, I know it would be a mistake. If I were certain, right now, that you lack the strength to conquer yourself for the sake of your own manhood, I would accept Lord James."

Whether or not the girl was capable of such an act, there could be no doubt that she meant what she said, and her tone carried conviction to Blake. He was silent for a long moment. When he replied, it was in a voice dull and heavy with despondency. "You don't realize what you're putting me up against."

"I realize that you must clear away all my doubt of your strength," she rejoined, with no lessening of her firmness. "You were strong there on that savage coast, in the primitive. But you must prove yourself strong enough to rise out of the primitive—to rise to your true, your higher self."

He bent as if he were being crushed under a ponderous weight. His voice dulled to a half articulate murmur. "You—won't—help—me?"

"I cannot—I dare not!" she insisted almost fiercely. "If I did I should doubt. This dreadful fear! You must prove you're strong! You must master yourself for the sake of your own manhood!"

At last he was forced to realize that it was necessity, not desire, that impelled her to thrust him from her. He must fight his hard battle alone—he must fight without even the thought that he had her sympathy.

He should have divined that she would be secretly hoping, perhaps praying for him, striving for him in spirit with all the might of her true love. But by her insistence she had at last compelled him to doubt her love.

He thought of the many times that he had gone down in disgraceful defeat, and black despair fell upon him. His broad shoulders stooped yet more.

"What's the use?" he muttered thickly.

But the question itself served as the goad to quicken all his immense reserve of endurance. He looked up at Genevieve, heavy-eyed but grim with determination.

"You don't know what you've put me up against," he said. "But I'll not lay down yet. Nobody ever called me a quitter. You've a right to ask me to make good. I'll make a stagger at it. Good-bye!"

He turned from her and walked up the room with the steady deliberation of one who bears a heavy burden.

It was almost more than she could endure. She started to dart after him, and her lips parted to utter an entreaty for him to come back to her. But her spirit had been tempered in that fierce struggle for life on the savage coast of Mozambique.

She checked herself, and waited until, without a backward glance, he had passed out through the curtained doorway. Then, and not until then, she sank down in her chair and gave way to the anguish of her love and doubt and dread.



CHAPTER XIII

PLANS AND OTHER PLANS

A quarter after nine the next morning found Griffith at the door of Mr. Leslie's sanctum. He stuffed his gauntlet gloves into a pocket of his old fur coat, and entered the office, his worn, dark eyes vague with habitual abstraction.

Mr. Leslie was in the midst of his phonographic dictation. He abruptly stopped the machine and whirled about in his swivel-chair to face the engineer.

"Sit down," he said. "How's the Zariba Dam?"

"No progress," answered Griffith with terse precision. He sat down with an air of complete absorption in the act, drew out an old knife and his pipe, and observed: "You didn't send for me for that."

"How's the bridge?"

"Same," croaked the engineer, beginning to scrape out the bowl of his pipe with the one unbroken blade of his knife.

"That young fool still running around town?"

"Can't say. It'd be a good thing to have him do it all the time if work was going on. Had a letter from McGraw, that man I put in as general foreman. He says everything is frozen up tight; may keep so for two weeks or more."

"You've laid off most the force?"

"No, not even the Slovaks."

Mr. Leslie frowned. "Two or three weeks at full pay, and no work? That's an item."

"Hard enough to hold together a competent force on such winter work as that," rejoined Griffith. "Almost impossible with your kid-glove Resident Engineer. I've said nothing all this time; but he's made some of my best men quit—bridge workers that've stayed by me for years. Said they couldn't stand for his damned swell-headedness, not even to oblige me."

"Well, well, I leave it to you. Do the best you can. It's a bad bargain, but we've got to go through with it. Only time the young fool ever showed a glimmer of sense was when he had his father's lawyers drew his contract with me. My lawyers can't find a flaw in it."

"Not even diamond cut diamond, eh?" cackled Griffith. He ceased scraping at his pipe to peer inquisitively into the bowl. "What I've never been able to figure out is how he happened to solve the problem of that central span. Don't think you've ever realized what a wonderful piece of work that was. It's something new. Must have been a happy accident—must have come to him in what I'd call a flash of intuition or genius. He sure hadn't it in him to work such a thing out in cold blood."

"Genius?—pah!" scoffed Mr. Leslie.

"Hey?" queried Griffith, glancing up sharply. "What else, then?"

"I've recently been given reason to suspect—" began Mr. Leslie. He paused, hesitated, and refrained. "But we'll talk of that later. First, my reason for sending for you. I understand that you know this man Blake, who, unfortunately, was the person that saved my daughter."

Griffith replied with rather more than his usual dryness. "If I've got a correct estimate of what Miss Leslie had to be pulled through, it's lucky that Tom Blake was the man."

"You've a higher opinion of him than I have."

"We've worked together."

"He's in your office now," snapped Mr. Leslie.

"Yes, and he stays there long as he wants," rejoined Griffith in a quiet matter-of-fact tone. "It's your privilege to hire another consulting engineer."

Mr. Leslie brought his shaggy eyebrows together in a perplexed frown. "Must say, I can't understand how the fellow makes such friends. Your case is hardly less puzzling than that of the Earl of Avondale."

"Hey? Oh, you mean young Scarbridge. He seems to be one of the right sort—even if he is the son of a duke. But if Tommy hadn't introduced him as a friend—"

"We're talking about Blake," interrupted Mr. Leslie. "I want your help."

"Well?" asked Griffith warily.

"He has put me under obligations, and refuses to accept any reward from me. It's intolerable!"

"Won't accept anything, eh? Well, if he says he won't, he won't. No use butting your head against a concrete wall."

"He's a fool!"

"I'd hardly agree as to that. He doesn't always do as people expect him to. Same time, he usually has a reason."

"But for him to refuse to take either cash or a position!"

"I notice, though, he drew his pay-check for the Q. T. survey. No; Tommy isn't altogether a fool—not altogether."

"Twenty-five-thousand-dollar position!" rasped Mr. Leslie.

"Hey?"

"Offered him that, and—"

"You offered him—?" echoed Griffith, his lean, creased face almost grotesque with astonishment.

"Think I don't value my daughter's life?" snapped Mr. Leslie. "I was ready to do that and far more for him. He refused—not only refused but insulted me."

Griffith peered intently into the angry face of his employer. "Insulted you, eh? Guess you prodded him up first."

"I admit I had rather misjudged him in some respects."

"So you gave him the gaff, eh?—and got it back harder!" cackled Griffith.

"He shall be compelled to accept what I owe him, indirectly, if not directly. You have given him work?"

"Yes."

"You've, of course, told him that I'm the Coville Construction Company."

"Not yet."

"What! You're certain of that?"

Griffith nodded. "He sailed into me, first thing, for taking work from you. To ease him off, I said the Coville Company had taken over the bridge from you. The matter hasn't happened to come up again since."

"You're certain he doesn't know I'm interested in the company?"

"Not unless somebody else has told him." "Then—let's see—We'll appoint him Assistant Resident Engineer on the bridge."

"He'll not take it under young Ashton."

"Not if his salary is put at twenty-five thousand?"

"As Assistant Engineer?" said Griffith, incredulous.

"You'll be too busy with my other projects to keep up these visits to Michamac. Besides, you said the bridge is coming to the crucial point of construction."