“I don’t want your damned money,” the other gulped.  “I’ve drawn my wages.”

“Nevertheless, I shall pay you well.  It’s highly probable that you’ve wrecked the S. R. & N. and ruined me, but I don’t intend to forget my obligations to you.  It’s unfortunate.  Call on the cashier in the morning.  Good night.”

He left them standing there unhappily, dumb and stiff with shame.  Once outside the house, he plunged down the hill as if fleeing from the scene of some crime.  He rushed through the night blindly, for he had loved his assistant engineer, and the memory of that chalk-faced, startled girl hurt him abominably.

When he came to the company office he was walking slowly, heavily.  He found Gray inside and dropped into a chair:  his face was grimly set, and he listened dully to the physician’s rambling talk.

“I fired Appleton!” he broke out, at last.  Gray looked up quickly.  “He acknowledged that he—­did it.  I had no choice.  It came hard, though.  He’s a good boy.”

“He did some great work, Chief!”

“I know!  That affair at the Crossing—­I intend to pay him well, if he’ll accept.  It’s not that—­I like those kids, Stanley.  Eliza took it harder than he.  It wasn’t easy for me, either,” he sighed, wearily.  “I’d give ten thousand dollars if it hadn’t happened.  She looked as if I’d struck her.”

“What did they say?”

“Nothing.  He has been careless, disloyal—­”

“You told them so?”

O’Neil nodded.

“And they said nothing?”

“Nothing!  What could they say?”

Gray answered gruffly:  “They might have said a good deal.  They might have told you how they paid off your men and saved a walk-out when I had no money.”

O’Neil stared incredulously.  “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

When he had the facts he rose with an exclamation of dismay.

“God!  Why didn’t you tell me?  Why didn’t they speak out?  I—­I—­ why, that’s loyalty of the finest kind.  All the money they had saved, too—­when they thought I had failed!  Jove!  That was fine.  Oh, I’m sorry!  I wonder what they think of me?  I can’t let Dan go after that.  I—­” He seized his cap and hurried out of the building.

“It’s hardly right—­when things were going so well, too!” said Dan.  He was sitting crumpled up in a chair, Eliza’s arm encircling his shoulders.  “I didn’t mean to give up any secrets, but—­I’m not myself when I’m with Natalie.”

“We must take our medicine,” his sister told him, gravely.  “We deserve it, for this story may spoil all he’s done.  I didn’t think it of her, though.”

Dan groaned and bowed his head in his hands.  “I don’t know which hurts worse,” he said—­“his anger or her action.  She—­couldn’t do such a thing, Sis; she just couldn’t!”

“She probably didn’t realize—­she hasn’t much sense, you know.  But after all he’s suffered, to think that we should injure him!  I could cry.  I think I shall.”