“Howdy, Austen?” said Brush, genially, lookin’ for the Honourable Hilary?  Flint got up from New York this morning, and sent for him a couple of hours ago.  He’ll be back at two.”

“Have you read the pronunciamento?” inquired Mr. Billings.  “Say, Austen, knowin’ your sentiments, I wonder you weren’t one of the twenty prominent citizens.”

“All you anti-railroad fellers ought to get together,” Mr. Bascom suggested; “you’ve got us terrified since your friend from Leith turned the light of publicity on us this morning.  I hear Ham Tooting’s been in and made you an offer.”

News travels fast in Ripton.

“Austen kicked him downstairs,” said Jimmy Towle, the office boy, who had made a breathless entrance during the conversation, and felt it to be the psychological moment to give vent to the news with which he was bursting.

“Is that straight?” Mr. Billings demanded.  He wished he had done it himself.  “Is that straight?” he repeated, but Austen had gone.

“Of course it’s straight,” said Jimmy Towle, vigorously.  A shrewd observer of human nature, he had little respect for Senator Billings.  “Ned Johnson saw him pick himself up at the foot of Austen’s stairway.”

The Honourable Brush’s agate eyes caught the light, and he addressed Mr. Billings in a voice which, by dint of long training, only carried a few feet.

“There’s the man the Northeastern’s got to look out for,” he said.  “The Humphrey Crewes don’t count.  But if Austen Vane ever gets started, there’ll be trouble.  Old man Flint’s got some such idea as that, too.  I overheard him givin’ it to old Hilary once, up at Fairview, and Hilary said he couldn’t control him.  I guess nobody else can control him.  I wish I’d seen him kick Ham downstairs.”

“I’d like to kick him downstairs,” said Mr. Billings, savagely biting off another cigar.

“I guess you hadn’t better try it, Nat,” said Mr. Bascom.

Meanwhile Austen had returned to his own office, and shut the door.  His luncheon hour came and went, and still he sat by the open window gazing out across the teeming plain, and up the green valley whence the Blue came singing from the highlands.  In spirit he followed the water to Leith, and beyond, where it swung in a wide circle and hurried between wondrous hills like those in the backgrounds of the old Italians:  hills of close-cropped pastures, dotted with shapely sentinel oaks and maples which cast sharp, rounded shadows on the slopes at noonday; with thin fantastic elms on the gentle sky-lines, and forests massed here and there—­silent, impenetrable hills from a story-book of a land of mystery.  The river coursed between them on its rocky bed, flinging its myriad gems to the sun.  This was the Vale of the Blue, and she had touched it with meaning for him, and gone.