Any known and admitted facts connected with either one of the contestants are, however, in order, and so while we are waiting for old Moggins, who drives the village ’bus, and who has been charged by Miss Felicia on no account to omit bringing in his next load a certain straight, bronzed-cheeked, well-set-up young man with a springy step, accompanied by a middle-aged gentleman who looked like a soldier, and deliver them both with their attendant baggage at her snow-banked door, any data regarding this same young man’s movements since the night Peter wanted to hug him for leaving his uncle’s service, cannot fail to be of interest.

To begin then with the day on which Jack, with Frederick, the second man’s assistance, packed his belongings and accepted Garry’s invitation to make a bed of his lounge.

The kind-hearted Frederick knew what it was to lose a place, and so his sympathies had been all the more keen.  Parkins’s nose, on the contrary, had risen a full degree and stood at an angle of 45 degrees, for he had not only heard the ultimatum of his employer, but was rather pleased with the result.  As for the others, no one ever believed the boy really meant it, and everybody—­even the maids and the high-priced chef—­fully expected Jack would turn prodigal as soon as his diet of husks had whetted his appetite for dishes more nourishing and more toothsome.  But no one of them took account of the quality of the blood that ran in the young man’s veins.

It was scheming Peter who saved the day.

“Put that young fellow to work, Henry,” he had said to MacFarlane the morning after the three had met at the Century Club.

“What does he know, Peter?”

“Nothing, except to speak the truth.”

And thus it had come to pass that within twenty-four hours thereafter the boy had shaken the dust of New York from his feet—­ even to resigning from the Magnolia, and a day later was found bending over a pine desk knocked together by a hammer and some ten-penny nails in a six-by-nine shanty, the whole situated at the mouth of a tunnel half a mile from Corklesville, where he was at work on the pay-roll of the preceding week.

Many things had helped in deciding him to take the proffered place.  First, Peter had wanted it; second, his uncle did not want it, Corinne and his aunt being furious that he should go to work like a common laborer, or—­as Garry had put it—­“a shovel-spanked dago.”  Third, Ruth was within calling distance, and that in itself meant Heaven.  Once installed, however, he had risen steadily, both in MacFarlane’s estimation and in the estimation of his fellow-workers; especially the young engineers who were helping his Chief in the difficult task before him.  Other important changes had also taken place in the two years:  his body had strengthened, his face had grown graver, his views of life had broadened and, best of all, his mind was at rest.  Of one thing he was sure—­no confiding young Gilberts would be fleeced in his present occupation—­not if he knew anything about it.