“You remember what I hinted at, yesterday,” he said in low tones; “about the rough-house we have been having in the camps.  It hasn’t stopped short of murder.  I objected to the MacMorroghs before the contract was given to them; and since, I have fought the lawlessness as I could.  Now your uncle comes over here and doesn’t find any lawlessness.  What is the inference?”

“That you have been—­” she took him up quickly, and there was swift indignation in the blue eyes.

“—­lying to gain a personal end,” he finished for her.

Penfield had been apparently listening avidly to the president’s praise of the dry altitudes as a sure cure for consumption, but now he had his face in his plate.  Ford devoted himself for the moment to the deaf Miss Van Bruce, and when he turned back to Alicia he was telegraphing with his eyes for discretion.  She understood, and the low-toned tete-a-tete was not resumed.  Later, when they had a moment together in the dispersion from the breakfast-table, he tried to apologize for what he was pleased to call his “playing of the baby act.”  But she reassured him in a low-spoken word.

“Brother told me—­I know more than you give me credit for, Mr. Ford.  Mr. North doesn’t like you—­he would be glad if you would resign. You must not resign!”

The others, personally-conducted by Mr. Colbrith, were crowding to the rear platform for an after-breakfast view of the headquarters camp.  Ford and Alicia followed, but without haste.

“You have chanced upon the word, Miss Adair,” Ford was saying.  “I decided last night that I should resign.”

“No,” she objected.

“Yes; I must.  Sometime I may tell you why.”

“I say you must not.  That was the last word in brother’s letter; and he wished me to repeat it to you,” she insisted.

“Where is your brother?” he asked.

“He was in London when he wrote.”

“He has thrown up his hand.”  Ford was pessimistic again.

Miss Adair looked about her despairingly for some means of prolonging the whispered confidence.  Penfield, deferentially in the rear of the platform group, was never safely out of earshot.

“I want to see the engine that so nearly plunged us into a collision last night,” she said aloud; and Penfield’s visible ear betrayed the listening mind.

Ford took his cue promptly.  “We can go out the other way,” he said; and the secretary pro tempore had no excuse for following.

They found the cab of the 1012 deserted, with the steam in the huge boiler singing softly at the behest of the banked fire.  Miss Adair lost her curiosity as soon as Ford had lifted her to the foot-plate.

“Now you are to tell me all about it—­quickly,” she commanded.  “Uncle Sidney will be calling for you as soon as he misses you.  Why are you so foolish as to talk about resigning?  Don’t you see what they will say then?—­that you were afraid?”