"I'm sorry; truly, I am. And you have been wasting it in another
direction as well. To-night will see the shale-slide conquered
definitely, I hope, and three more days of good weather will send us
into the Carbonate yards."

She broke in upon him with a little cry of impatient despair.

"That shows how unwary you have been! Tell me: is there not a little
valley just above here--an open place where your railroad and Uncle
Somerville's run side by side?"

"Yes, it is a mile this side of the canyon head. What about it?"

"How long is it since you have been up there?" she queried.

Winton stopped to think. "I don't know--a week, possibly."

"Yet if you had not been coming here every evening, you or Mr. Adams
would have found time to go--to watch every possible chance of
interference, wouldn't you?"

"Perhaps. That was one of the risks I took, a part of the price-paying
I spoke of. If anything had happened, I should still be unrepentant."

"Something _has_ happened. While you have been taking things for
granted, Uncle Somerville has been at work day and night. He has built
a track right across yours in that little valley, and he keeps a train
of cars or something, filled with armed men, standing there all the
time!"