The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 16, 1904, Page 4

at the legal verbiage, and still more at the clear-cut judicial opinion. “The facts in the case, as you state them, point to judicial connivance, and we should always be slow to charge that, Mr. Kent. Technically, the court was not at fault. D notice was served on the company's attorney. of record, and you admit, yourself, that the delay, short as it was, would have been sufficient if you had not been accidentally detained And, since there were no coniravening affidavi submitted, Judge MacFarlane 5 technically warranted in granting the prayer for a temporafy receiver.” “I"m not trying to refute that,” said Kent. “But afterward, when I called upon the Judge with the evi- dence in hand—" ~“He was under no absolute obliga- tion to retry the case out of court, as you know, Mr. Kent. Neither was he obliged to give you an unofficial notice of the day upon which he would hear mwtion for the discharge of the er and the vacation of his order appointing him.” Under no absolute legal obligation, perhaps retorted Kent. “But the moral gation—" We are coming to that. you I have been giving you what would probably be a minority opinion of an appellate cour if you could take an appeal. The ma- jority opinion might take higher grounds, pointing to the manifest in- justice done to the defendant company b he shortness of the delay granted; by Judge MacFarlar refusal to con- nue the hearing fc ne hour, though ir attorney was present and pleading r the same; and lastly for the in- definite postponement of the hearin on the merits of insufficient grounGs, since the Judge was not at the time, and has not since been, too ill to at- tend to the routine duties of his Kent looked up quickly. Judge Marston, do you know that jon to be true?” he de- slow smile came and went in rospective eyes of the older man. 1 have been giving you the opin- fon of the higher court,” he said, with his nearest approach to jocoseness. It upon the supposition that your gations would be supported by evidence.” Kent smoked on in silence while the train measured the rail lengths be tween two of the isolated prairie sta- i3 base tions. When he spoke again there was honest deference in his manner. “Mr. Marston, you have a far bet- ter right to your courtesy title of Judge’ than that given by the Great American Title Company, Unlimited,” he said. “Will you advise me?” “As plain Oliver Marston and a man old enough to be your father, yes. What have you been doing? Trying to oust the receiver, I suppose.” “Yes; trying to find some technical flaw by which he could be ousted.” “It can’t be done. You must strike higher. Are you fully convinced of Judge MacFarlane’s venality?"” “As fully as I can be without having seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ear Marston opened his watch and looked at it. Then he lighted another of the villainous little cigars. “We have an hour yet,” he said. “You have been giving me the legal points in the case; now give me the inferences—all of them.” Kent laughed. “I'm afraid I sha'n’t be able to for- get the Lieutenant Governor. I shall have to call some pretty hard names.” “Call them,” said his companion, briefly; and Kent went deep into the deta beginning with the formation of the political gang in Gaston the dismantled. The listener in the gray dust-coat heard him through without comment. When Kent reached the end of the in- ferences, telling the truth without scruple and letting the charge of poli- tical and judicial corruption lie where it would, the engineer was whistling for the capital. “You have told me some things I knew, and some others that I only suspected,” was all the answer he got until the train was slowing into the Union station. Then as he flung away the stump of the little cigar the silent one added: “If I were in your place, Mr. Kent, I believe I should take a supplementary course of reading in the State law.” “In what particular part of it?"” said Kent, keen anxiety in every word. “In that part of the fundamental law which relates to the election of Circuit Judges, let us esay. If I had vour case to fight, I should try to ob- literate Judge MacFarlane.” Kent had but a monient in which to remark the curious coincidence in the use of precisely the same word by both Hunnicott and his present ad- viser. “But, my dear sir, we should gain nothing by MacFarlane's removal when his successor would be appoint- ed by the executive!™ Marston turned in the doorway of the smoking compartment and laid a fatherly hand on the younger man's shoulder. “My boy, I didn’t say ‘remove’; I said.'obliterate.’ Good night.” CHAPTER XIV. The Gerrymander. With Judge Marston's hint partly to point the way, Kent was no long time in getting at work on the new lead. Having been at the time a practi- tioner in one of the counties affected, he knew the political deal by which MacFarlane had been elected. Briefly described, it was a swapping of horses in midstream. In the preliminary can- vass it was discovered that in all prob- ability Judge MacFarlane’s district, as constituted, would not re-elect him. But the adjoining district was strong enough to spare a county without loss to the party and that county added to MacFarlane’s voting strength would tip the scale in his favor. The Assem- bly vas in sesslon and the remedy was applied in the shape of a bill readjust- ing the district lines to fit the political necessity. While this bil' was still in the lower House an obstacle presented itself in the form of a vigorous protest from Judge Whitcomb, whose district was the one to suffer loss. The county in question was a prosperous one and the court fees—which a compliant clerk might secretly divide with the Judge appointing him—were large, wherefore ‘Whitcomb threatened political reprisals if Kiowa County should be taken away from him. The outcome was a com- promise. For elective purposes the two districts were gerrymandered as the bill proposed, but it was expressly pro- vided that the transferred county should remain judicially in Whit- comb's district until the expiration of Whitcomb's term of office. Having refreshed his memory as to the farts, Kent spent a forenoon in the State library. He stayed on past the iuncheon hour, fee on a dry diet of digests; and it t until hunger began to sharpen his faculties that he thought of going back of the statutory law to the fountainhead in the con- stitution of the State. Here, after he had read carefully section by section almost thrcugh the entire instrument, his eve lighted upon a clause which gradually grew luminous as he read and re-read it. “That is what Marston must be what he meant,” and returning the bouk to its niche in the alcove he sat down to put his face in his hands and sum up the status in logical sequence. The conclusion must have been con- vincing since he presently sprang up and left the room quickly to have him- self shot down the elevator shaft the street lev The telegraph offi in the capitol was closed, but there was another in the Hotel Brunswick, two squares distant, and thither he went. Hold the pool in fighting trim at all hazards. Think 1 have found a weak link in the chain,” was his wire to Lor- ing at Boston; and, having sent it. he went around to Cassatti’s and astonish- ed the waiter by ordering a hearty luncheon at half-past 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It was late in the evening before he left the tiny office on the fifth floor of tke Quintard building where one of his to former stenographers had set up in business for herself. Since & o'clock the young woman had been steadily driving the typewriter to Kent's dic- tation. - When the final sheet came out with a whirring rasn of the ratchet, he suddenly remembered that he had promised Miss Van Brock to dine with her., It was too late for the dinner, but not too late to go and apologize, and he did the thing that he could, stopping at his rooms on the way to dress while his cab driver waited. He found Portia alone, for which he was glad; but her greeting was dis- tinctly accusive. “If I should pretend to fended and tell Thomas the door, what could you sel she began, before a word in exculpation. “I should say every sort of excuseful thing I could think of, knowing very well that the most ingenious lie would short of atoning for the of- be deeply of- to show you say for your- he could say fall far fens he replied humboiy. “Possibly it would be better to tell the truth—had you thought of that?” uggested, quite without malice. s, I had, and I shall, if youll let me begin back a bit.” He drew up a chair to face her and sat on the edge of it. “You know I told you I was going to Gaston to sell my six lots while Major Guilford’s little boom is on?" m trylng to remember; go on.” “Well, I went yesterday morning and returned late last night. Do you know, it’s_positively marvelous!” “Which—the six lots, the boom, or the celerity of your movements?” she asked, with a stimulation of the deep- est interest. ““All three, if you please. But I meant the miraculous revival of things along the Transwestern. But that is neither here nor thére—" “I think it is very there,” she interrapted. “I see you want me to tell the truth— the whole truth; but I am determined. The first man I met after dinner was much here and Hunnicott, and when I had made him my broker in the real es- tate affair we fell to talking about the railroad steal. Speaking of Mac- Farlane's continued absence, Hunnicott said jokingly that it was a pity we couldn’t go back to the methods of a few hundred years ago and hire the Hot Springs doctor to ‘obliterate’ him. The word stuck in my mind, and I broke away and took the train chiefly to have a chance to think out the new line. In the smoking-room of the sleep- er I found—whom do you suppose?"” “Oh, 1 don't know. Judge MacFar- lane, perhaps, coming. back to give you a chance to poison him at short range?" “No, it was Marston.” “And he talked so long and so fast that you couldn’t get here in time for dinner this evening? That would be the most picturesque of the little fic- tions you spoke of.” Kent laughed. “For the first hour he ‘wouldn't talk at all—just sat there wooden-faced, smoking vile little cigars that made me think I was getting hay fever. But I wouldn’t glve up, and after I had worn out all of the commonplaces I began on the Transwestern muddle. At that he woke up all at once, and before I knew it he was giving me an expert legal opinion on the case, meaty and sound and judicial. Miss Van Brock, that man is a lawyer, and an exceed- ingly able one at that.” “Of course,” she said coolly. “He was one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of his own State at 42; that was before he came West for his health. I found that out a long time ago.” “And you never told me!” said Kent reproachfully. “Well, no matter; I found out for myself that he is a man to tie to.. After we had canvassed the purely legal side of the affair he want- ed to know more, and I went in for the details, telling him all the inferences which involve Bucks, Meigs, Hendricks, MacFarlane and the lot of them.” Miss Portia’s eyes were flashing. “Good, good, good,” she said. “David, I'm proud of you. That took courage— heaps of it.” “I did have to forget pretty hard that he was the Lieutenant Governor and nominally one of the gang. But if he is not with us, neither is he against us. He took it all in quietly, and when I was through he said: ‘You have told me some things that I know, and some others that I only suspected.” " . “Was that all?” asked Miss Van Brock, eagerly. ‘““No; I took a good long breath and asked his advice. “Did he give it “He did. He said in sober earnest just what Hunnicott had said in a joke—If 1 had your case to fight I should try to obliterate Judge MacFarlane.’ I began to say that MacFarlane’s removal wouldn't help us so long as Bucks has the appointing of his successor,and then he turned on me and hammered it in with a last word just as we were leav- ing the train: ‘I didn’t say remove; I said obliterate,” I caught on, after so long a time, and I've been hard at work ever since.” “You are obliterating me,” said Miss Portia. “I haven't the slightest idea what it is all about.” “It's easy from this on,” said Kent, consolingly. “You know how Mac- Farlane secured his re-election?” “Everybody know that.” ‘“Well, to cut a long story short, the gerrymander deal won't stand the light. The constitution says—" *'Oh, please don't quote law books at me. Put it in English—woman- VZS—SY ' —— ! English, if you can.” I will. The special act of the As- sembly is void; therefore there was ne legal election, and, by consequence, there is no Judge and no reckiver.” Miss Van Brock was silent for a re- flective minute. Then she said: “On second thought, perhaps you would better tell me what the consti- tution sa Mr. David. Possibly I ceuld grasp it.” “It is in the section on elections. It says: ‘All Circuit or District Judges, and all special Judges, shall be elected by the qualified voters of the respec- tive circuits or districts in whieh they are to hold their court.” Kiowa Coun- ty was cut out of Judge Whitcomb's circuit and placed in Judge MacFar- lane's for electoral purposes only. In ali other respects it remains a part of Judge Whitcomb's circuit, and will so centinue until Whitcomb's term e pires. Without the vote of Kiow. MacFarlane could not have been elect- ed; with it he was illegally elected, or, to put it the other way about, he was not elected at all. Since he is not law- fully a Judge, his acts are void, among them this appointment of Major Guil- ford as receiver for the Transwest- ern.” She was not as enthusiastic as he thought she ought to be. In the soil prepared for it by the political confi- dences of the winter there had grown up a n -branching tree of intimacy between these two; a frank, sexless friendship, as Kent would have de- scribed it, in which a man who was not very much given to free speech with any one unburdened himself, and the woman made him believe that her quick, apprehending sympathy was the one thing needful—as women have done since the world began. 2 Since the looting of the railroad which had taken him out of the steadying grind of regular work, Kent had been the prey of mixed motives. From the first he had thrown himself heartily into the problem of retrieval, but the pugnacious professional ambi- tion to break the power of the ma- chine had divided time pretty equally ith sentiment. Elinor had said little about the vise-nip of hard- ship which the stock-smashing would impose upon three unguardianed wom- en, but Penelope had been less reticent. ‘Wanting bare justice at the hands of the wreckers, Elinor would go to her wedding with Ormsby as the beggar maid went to King Cophetua; and all the loyalty of an unselfish love rose up in Kent to make the fight with the grafters a personal duel. At every step in the hitherto discour- aging struggle Portia Van Brock had been his keen-sighted adviser, prompt- er, ally of proof. He told himself now and again in a flush of gratitude that he was coming to owe her more than he had ever owed any woman; that where other men, more—or less—fortu- nate, were not denied the joy of pos- session, he, the disappointed one, was finding a true and loyal comradeship next best, if not quite equal to the beatitudes of passion. In all of which David Xent was not entirely just to Rimself. However much he owed to Portia—and the debt was large—she was not his only creditor. Something he owed to the unsatisfied love; more, perhaps, to the good blood in his veins; but most of all to the bat. tle itself. For out of the soul-harrow- ings of endeavor was emerging a better man, a stronger man, than any his friends had known. Brutgl as their blind gropings were, the flagellants of the dark ages plied their some dim purpose. Natures there be that rise only to the occasion, and if there be no occasion, no floggings of adversity or bone-wrenchings upon the rack of things denied, there will be no awakening—no victory. David Kent was suffering in both kinds and was the better man for it. From looking forward to success in the narrow field of professional advance- ment, or in the scarcely broader one of the righting of one woman’s financial wrongs, he was coming now to crave it in the nathe of manhood—to burn with a desire to see justice done for its own sake. So when he had come to Portia with the scheme of effacing Judge MacFar- lane and his recelver at one shrewd blow, the first of the many plans which held out a fair promise of success as a reward for daring, he was disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm. “What is the matter with it?” he da- manded, when he had given her five full minutes for reflection. “I don’t know, David,” she said gravely. “Have I ever thrown cold water on any of your schemes thus far?™ “No, indeed. You have been the loy- alest partisan a man ever had, I think; the only one I have to whom I can talk freely. And I have told you more than I have all the others put to- “I know you have. And it hurts me to pull back now when you want me to push. But I can’t help it. Do you be- lieve in’ a woman's intuition?" “I suppose I do; all men do, don't ‘they ? She was tying little knots in the fringe of the table scarf, but the prophetess-eyes, as Penelope called them, were not following the deft in- tertwinings of the.slender fingers. “You mean to set about ‘oblftera ing’ Judge MacFarlane forthwith?' she asked. “Assuredly. I have been whipping the thing into shape all afternoon; that is what kept me from dining with you.” “It involves some kind of legal pro- cedure?” “Yes; rather a complicated one.” “Could you explain it so that I could understan it?" “I think so. -In the first place the question is raised by means of an in- formation or inquiry called a quo war- ranto. This is directed to the receiver, and is a demand to know what au- thority he holds. Is it clear thus far?"” “Pellucidly,” she said. “In reply the receiver cites his au- thority, which is the order from Judge MacFarlane; and in our turn we pro- ceed to show that the authority does not exist—that the Judge's election was fllegal and that therefore his acts are vold. Do I make it plain?” “You make it seem as though it were impossible to fail. And yet I know you will fail.” , “How do you know it?"” “Don’t ask me; I couldn't begin to tell you that. But in some spiritual or mental looking-glass I can see you coming to me with the story of that failure—coming to ask my help.” He smiled. “You don’t need to be the proph- etess Penelope says you are to foresee part of that. I always come to you with my woes.” “Do_you?—oftener than yo Miss Brentwood?” Pt This time his smile was a mere tightening of the lips. 7 whips to. “You do love to grind me on that side, don’t you?” he said. “I and my affairs are less than nothing to Miss Brentwood, and no one knows it any better than you do.” “But you want to go to her,” she persisted, “I am only the alternative.” “Miss Van Brock, what is it you want me to say? What can I say more than I said a moment ago—that you are the truest friend a man ever had?” The answering look out of the brown eyes was age-old in its infinite wisdom. “How little vou men know when vou think vou know the most,” she said half musingly; then she broke off abruptly. “Let us talk about some- thing else. If Major Guilford is wrecking the railroad, why is he spending so much meney in improve- ments? Have you thought to ask y elf that auestion?” “A good many times,” he admitted, following her promptly back to the first prineiples. % “And you have not found the swer?"” “Not one that fully satisfies me—no.” “I've found one.” “Intuitively?” he smiled. “No; it's pure logic this time. Do you remember showing me a letter that Mr. Hunnicott wrote you just before the explosion—a letter in which he re- peated a bit of gossip about Mr. Sem- ple Falkland and his mysterious visit to Gaston?” é “Yes, I remember it.""" “Do vou know who Mr. Falkland is?" “Who doesn’t?” he queried. “He has half of Wall street in his clientele.” “Yes:; but particularly he is the ad- visory counsel of the Plantagould sys- tem. Ever since you showed me that letter I have been trying to account for his presence in Gaston on the day be- fore Judge MacFarlane's spring term of court. I should never have found out but for Mrs. Brentwood.” “Mrs. Brentwood!" Miss Van Brock nodded. “Yes, the mother of my—of the young person for whom I am the alternative, is in a peck of trouble; I quote her verbatim. She and her two daughters hold some three thousand shares of Western Pacific stock. It was pur- chaced at 57 and it is now down to 21.” “Twenty and a quarter to-day,” Kent corrected. “Never mind the fractions. The moth- er of the incomparable—Penelope-~has heard that I am a famous business woman, a worthy understudy for Mrs. Hetty Ggeen, so she came to me for ad- vice. She had a letter from a New York broker offering her a fraction more than the market price for her three thousand shares of Western Pa- cifie.”” 3 Well?” said Kent. “Meaning what did I do? I did what you did not do—what you are not doing even now; I put two and two together in the twinkling of a bedstaff. Why should a New York broker be picking up outlying Western Pacific at a frac- tion more than the market when the stock is sinking every day? I was cu- rious enough to pass the ‘why’ along to a friend of mine in Wall street.” “Of course, he told you all about it,” said Kent, incredulously: “He told me what I needed to know. The broker in question is a Planta- gould man.” s “Still I fail to ‘connect up,’ as the linemen say.” “Do you? Ah, David, David! Will you leave it for a’ woman to point out what you should have suspected the moment you read that bit of gossip in Mr. Hunnicott's letter?” Her hand was on the arm of her chair. He cqvered it with his own. “I'll leave it foryou, Portia. You are my good angel.” She withdrew the hand quickly, but there was no more than playful resent- ment in her retort. “Shame on you!” she scoffed. “What would Miss Brentwood say?” “I wish you would leave her out of it,” he frowned. “You are continually ignoring the fact that she has prom- ised to be the wife of another man.” “And has thereby freed you from all obligations of loyalty? Don’t deceive yourself; women are not made that way. Doubtless she will go on and marry the other man in due season; but she will never forgive you if you smash her ideals. But we were talk- ing about the things you ought to have guessed. Fetch me the atlas from the bookcase—lower shelf, righthand cor- ner; that's it.” He did it, and in further obedience opened the thin quarto at the map of the United States. There were heavy black lines, inked in with a pen, trac- ing out the various ramifications of a great railway system. The nucleus of the system lay in the Middle West, but there was a growing network of the black lines reaching out toward the Pa- cific. And connecting the trans-Mis- sissippi network with the Western was a broad red line paralleling the Trans- western Railway. She smiled at his sudden start of comprehension. “Do you begin to suspect things?” she asked. He nodded his head. “You ought to be a man. If you were, T should never give you a mo- ment’s peace until you consented to take a partnership with me. It's as plain as day, now.” “Is it? Then I wish you would make it appear so to me, I am not half as subtile as you give me credit for be- ing.” “Yet you worked this out.” “That was easy enough, after T had seen Mrs. Brentwood’s letter, and yours from Mr. Hunnicott. The Plantagould people want your railroad and the re- ceivership is a part of a plan for ac- quiring it. But why is Major Guilford spending so much money for improve- ments?” “His reasons are not far to seek now that you have shown me where to look. His instructions are to run the stock down so that the Plantagould can buy it in. Cut rates and big expenditures will do that—have done it. On the other hand, it is doubtless a condition of the deal that the road shall be turned over whole as to its property values—there is to be no wrecking in the general acceptance of the word. an- The Plantagould doesn't want a picked’ skeleton.” Miss Portia’s eyes narrowed. “It's a skillful bit of engineering, isn't it?” he said. “You'd admire it as artistic work yourself if your point of view were not so hopelessly personal.” “You don’t know half the artistic skill of it yet,” he went on. “Besides all these different ends that are being conserved, the gang is taking care of its surplus heelers on the pay-rolls of the company. More than that, it is making_Immense political capital for itself, Everybody knows what the pol- icy of the road was under the old re- gime: ‘All the tariff the traffic will stand.” But now a Bucks man has “old of it and liberality is the world. Every is An, the man in Transwestern territory swearing by Bucks and Guilford. my dear friend, his Excellency Governor is a truly great man!” She nodded. “ “I've heen trying to impress you. with that fact all along. The mistake you made was in not joining the People’s party early in the campaign, David.” But Kent was following out his own line of thought and putting it in words as it came. “Think of the brain work it took to bring 41l these things into line. There was no hiteh, no slip and nothing was overlooked. They picked their time and it was a moment when we were absolutely helpless. I had filed our charter, but our local organization was still incomplete. They had their Judge and the needful case in his court, pend- ing and ready for use at the precise moment. They had Hawk on the ground, armed and equipped; and they knew that unless a miracle intervened they would have nobody but an un- prepared local attorney to obstruct them.” “Is that all?” she asked. “No. The finest bit of sculpture is on the capstone of the pyramid. Since we have had no hearing on the merits, Guilford is only a temporary receiver, subject to discharge if the allegations in Hawk's amended petition are not sustained. After the major has suffl- ciently smashed the stock, Judge Mac- Farlane will come back, the hearing on the merits will be given, we shall doubtless make our point and the road will revert to the stockholders. But by that time enough of the stock will have changed hands on the ‘wreck’ price to put the Plantagould people safely in the saddle and the freezeout will be a tact accomplished.” Miss Van Brock drew a long breath that was more than half a sigh. “You spoke the simple truth, David, when you said that his Excellency is a great man. It seems utterly hopeless now that we have cleared up all the little mysteries.” Kent rose to take his leave. “No; that is where they all go out and I stay in,” he said cheerfulty. The shrewder he is, the more credit there will be in making him let go. And you mark my words: I am going to make him let go. Good-night.” She had gone with him to the door; was in the act of closing it behind when he turned back for a be- question. By the way, what did you tell Mrs. Brentwood to do?” “I told her not to do anything until she had consulted you and Mr. Loring and Brookes Ormsby. Was that right 2" “‘Quite right. If it comes up again, rub it in some more. We'll save her alive vet, if she will let us. Did you say I might come to dinner to-morrow evening? Thank you: you grow sweeter and more truly compassionate day by day. Good-night again.” CHAPTER XV. The Junketers. When Receiver Guilford took pos- session of the properties, appurten- ances and appendages of the seques- tered Transwestern Railway, one of the luxuries to which he fell heir was private car “Naught-seven,” a com- modious hotel on wheels originally used as the directors’ car of the West- ern Pacific, and later taken over by Lering to be put in commission as the general manager’'s special. In the hands of a friendly receiver this car became a boon to the capitol contingent; its observation platform served as a shifting rostrum from which a deep-chested executive or a mellifluous Hawk often addressed ad- miring crowds at way stations, and its dining saloon was the moving scene of many little relaxative feasts, at which Veuve Cliquot flowed freely, priceless cigars were burned, and the members of the organization unbent, each after hig kind. But to the men of the throttle and oil can car naught-seven, in the gift of the hospitable receiver, shortly became a nightmare. Like most private cars, it was heavier than the heaviest Pull- man, and the engineer who was con- strained to haul it like a dragging an- chor at the tall end of a fast train was prone to say words not to be found in any vocabulary known to respectable philologists. It was in the evening of .a wind- blown day, a week after Kent's visit to Gaston, that Engineer “Red” Callahan, oiling around for the all-night run with the fiyer on the Western division, heard above the din and clamor of Union sta- tion noises the sullen thump betoken- ing the addition of another car to his train. - “Now fwhat the divvle will that be?" he rasped, pausing, torch in hand, to apostrophize his fireman. The answer came out of one of the shadows to the rear on the lips of McTosh, the trainmadster. “You have the Naught-seyen to- night, Callahan, and a pretty severe head wind. Can you make your time?” ‘““Haven't thim bloody fools in the up- town office anything betthér to do than to tie that sivinty-ton ball-an’-chain to my leg such a night as this?"” This ig not what Callahan said; it is merely a printable paraphrase of his rejoinder. McTosh shook his head. He was a hold-over from the Loring administra- tlon, not because his place was not worth taking, but because as yet no po- litical heeler had turned up with the requisite. technical ability to hold it. “I don’t blame you for cussing it out,” he said; and the saying of it was a mark of the relaxed discipline which was creeping into all branches of the service. “Mr. Loring’s car is anybody’'s private wagon these days. Can you “make your time with her?” “Not on yer life,” Callahan growled. “Is it the owld potgutted thafe iv a rayceiver that's in her?"” “Yes, with Governor Bucks and a par- ty of his friends. I take it you ought to feel honored.” “Do 1?7 snapped Callahan. “If Idon’'t make thim junketers think they're in the scuff iv a cyclone whin I get thim on the crooks beyant Dolores ye can gimme time, Misther McTosh. Where do I get shut iv thim?” “At Agua Caliente. They are going to the hotel at Breezeland, I suppose. There is your signal to pull out.” “I'll go whin I'm dommed goéd an’ ready,” said Callahan, jabbing the snout of his oiler into the link ma- chinery. And again McTosh let the breach of discipline go without reproof. Breezeland Inn, the hotel at Agua Callente, is a year-round resort for asthmatics and other health seekers, ‘with a sanatorium annex which utilizes the waters of the warm springs for therapeutic purposes. But during the hot months the capital and the plains cities to the eastward send their quota of summer idlers and the house filis to its capacity. ? It was for this reason that Mr. Brookes Ormsby looking for a comfort- able resort to which he might take Mrs. Brentwood and her daughters for au outing, hit upon the expedient of going first in person to Breezeland, partly to make sure of accommoda- ticns, and partly to check up the at- tractions of the place against pic- turesque descriptions in the adver tisements. When he turned out of his sleeper in the early m ing at Agua Caliente Station, car Naught-seven had been thrown in on a siding a little farther up the line, and Ormsby re d the burly persgn of the Governor and the florid face and pu figure of the receiver; in the group of men crossing from the private car to the waiting inn tally-ho. Being a seasoned traveler, the ciubman lost no time in finding the station agent. “Isn’t there some way you can get me up to the hotel before that crowd reaches?”" he asked; adding rn make it worth your while.” The reply effaced the necessity haste ‘The Inn auto will be in a few minutes, and you can go up in that. Naught-seven brought Governor Bucks and the receiver and their party. and they're going down to Me- gilo, mining camp on the other side of the State li They've char- tered tally-ho for the day Ormsby waited, and a little later was whisked away to the hotel in the tenneau of the guests’ automobile. Af- terward came a day which was rather hard to get through. Breakfast, a leisurely weighing and measuring of the climatic, picturesque and health- mending conditions, and the writing of a letter or two helped him wear out the forenoon; but after luncheon the time dragged despiteously, and he was glad enough when the auto-car came to take him to the station for the evening train. As it happened, there were no other ers for the eastbound flyer; ding he still had some minutes , Ormsby lounged into the tele- h office. Here the bonds of en- nui were loosened by the gradual de- for down velopment of a little mystery. First the telephone bell rang smartly, and when the telegraph operator took down the ear-piece and said “Well?" in the imperious tone common to his kind, he evidently received a com- munication that shocked him. Ormsby overheard but a meager half of the wire conversation: and the excitement, whatever its nature, was at the other end of the line. None the I the station agent’s broken ejacu- lations were provocative of keen inter- est in a man who had been boring himself desperately for the better part of a day. “Caught him doing it, you say .. Oh, T don’t believe Great Sectt! that, you know . yes—uh-huh—I hear. But who did the shooting?" Whether the information came or not, Ormsby did not know, for at this con- jecture the telegraph instruments on the tablc set up a furious chattering, and the railway man dropped the re- ceiver and sprang to the key. (Continued Next Sunday.) JOE ROSENBERG'S. A FIT THAT FITS IS A FIT. BUT A FIT THAT'S A MISFIT GIVES THE WEARER “FITS." IF YOU DON'T WANT FiTS, You DO WANT A FIT. IF YOU DO WANT A FiT, YOU WANT ONE OF OUR PERFECT FITTING CORSETS. C a la Spirite . For Slender Figures " PRICE BEFORE. s I .50 Which Fits, but won't give you Fits. For the Most Exacting We Would Like You to Come in and Fitted to Some of Qur Form-Improving Corsets. Expert Corset Fitters In attendance to tell you what, Corset. is most suited to improve your form. ROSENBERG e 816 Market Street