“That’s all,” said the superintendent.  “Now I’ll have Bradford pull us up on the spur to give you room to get your baby crane ahead; then you can pull down and let us out.”

The shifting took some few minutes, and more than a little skill.  While it was in progress Lidgerwood was in the service-car, trying to persuade the young women to go to his state-room for a little rest and sleep on the return run.  In the midst of the argument, the door opened and Dawson came in.  From the instant of his entrance it was plain that he had expected to find the superintendent alone; that he was visibly and painfully embarrassed.

Lidgerwood excused himself and went quickly to the embarrassed one, who was still anchoring himself to the door-knob.  “What is it, Fred?” he asked.

“Judson:  he has just turned up, walking from Little Butte, he says, with a pretty badly bruised ankle.  He is loaded to the muzzle with news of some sort, and he wants to know if you’ll take him with you to An—­” The draftsman, facing the group under the Pintsch globe at the other end of the open compartment, stopped suddenly and his big jaw grew rigid.  Then he said, in an awed whisper, “God! let me get out of here!”

“Tell Judson to come aboard,” said Lidgerwood; and the draftsman was twisting at the door-knob when Miriam Holcombe came swiftly down the compartment.

“Wait, Fred,” she said gently.  “I have come all the way out here to ask my question, and you mustn’t try to stop me:  are you going to keep on letting it make us both desolate—­for always?” She seemed not to see or to care that Lidgerwood made a listening third.

Dawson’s face had grown suddenly haggard, and he, too, ignored the superintendent.

“How can you say that to me, Miriam?” he returned almost gruffly.  “Day and night I am paying, paying, and the debt never grows less.  If it wasn’t for my mother and Faith ... but I must go on paying.  I killed your brother——­”

“No,” she denied, “that was an accident for which you were no more to blame than he was:  but you are killing me.”

Lidgerwood stood by, man-like, because he did not know enough to vanish.  But Miss Brewster suddenly swept down the compartment to drag him out of the way of those who did not need him.

“You’d spoil it all, if you could, wouldn’t you?” she whispered, in a fine feminine rage; “and after I have moved heaven and earth to get Miriam to come out here for this one special blessed moment!  Go and drive the others into a corner, and keep them there.”

Lidgerwood obeyed, quite meekly; and when he looked again, Dawson had gone, and Miss Holcombe was sobbing comfortably in Eleanor’s arms.

Judson boarded the service-car when it was pulled up to the switch; and after Lidgerwood had disposed of his passengers for the run back to Angels, he listened to the ex-engineer’s report, sitting quietly while Judson told him of the plot and of the plotters.  At the close he said gravely:  “You are sure it was Hallock who got off of the night train at Silver Switch and went up the old spur?”