“How nice of you to come.  Where are you going?”

“Surprised, are you?” he was floundering.  “Charmed.  Ha, ha!  By Jove, Eleanor—­er—­I heard you were booked by this train and I—­I tried to catch it for a bit of a ride with you.  I missed it, don’t you know.  I’ll—­I’ll wager you don’t know what I did in my desperation.”

“I couldn’t guess,” she said, trying to catch Joe’s eye.

“I hired a private engine, ’pon my word, and then telegraphed ahead to stop this train!”

“Di—­did you do that?” she gasped, forgetting that the bridge was out.

Dauntless, meantime, was trying to explain to Miss Courtenay.  She already had told him that her aunt was ill in Vancouver, and he had smiled politely and aimlessly.

“I’m on my way to M——.  Sudden trip, very important,” he was saying.  “Missed the train—­I dare say it was this one—­so I took an engine to follow up.  Had to ride in the tender.”

“It must have been important,” she ventured.

“It was.  I—­” then with an inspired plunge—­“I was due at a wedding.”

“How unfortunate!  I hope you won’t miss it altogether.”

Joe caught his breath and thought:  “Now what the devil did she mean by that?  Has Eleanor told her the whole story?”

It must not be supposed that these young persons were lacking in the simpler gifts of intelligence; they were, individually, beginning to put two and two together, as the saying goes.  They were grasping the real situation—­groping for it, perhaps, but with a clear-sightedness and acumen which urged that a cautious tongue was expedient.  If the duplicity was really as four-handed as it seemed, there could be no harm in waiting for the other fellow to blunder into exposure.  Nothing could be explained, of course, until the conspirators found opportunity to consult privately under the new order of assignment.

“How romantic!” Eleanor said, as she walked stiffly ahead with her uncomfortable fiance.

“Eh?” was his simple remark.  He was suddenly puzzled over the fact that he had caught up to the train.  There was something startling in that.  “Oh—­er—­not at all romantic, most prosaic.  Couldn’t get a coach.  Been here long?”

“Since five o’clock.”

“I—­I suppose you got up to see the sunrise.”

“No, to see the river rise,” she replied.  “The bridge is gone.”  He was silent for twenty paces, trying to recall what he had said about telegraphing ahead.

“You don’t mean it!  Then I daresay they haven’t got my telegram stopping the train.”

“How annoying!”

Dauntless had just said to Anne, in a fit of disgust:  “Windomshire’s got a lot of nerve.  That was my engine, you know.  I hired it.”

Windomshire went on to say, careful that Joe was quite out of hearing:  “Mr. Dauntless was quite annoying.  He got into my engine without an invitation, and I’m hanged if he’d take a hint, even after I hired a stoker to throw a spadeful of coal over him.  I don’t know why he should be in such a confounded hurry to get to—­what’s the name of the place?  I—­er—­I really think I must go and speak to Miss Courtenay, Eleanor.  She—­er—­looks ill.”