"Nobody else?"

The old man was peering at him sharply from under the grey protruding
brows.

"Well, if you must know, Uncle Peter, this is what the notice says that
come by wire to the _Ledge_ office," and he read doggedly:

"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her
husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is
prostrated by the shock of his sudden death."

The old man became for the first time conscious of the tears in his
eyes, and, pulling down one of the blue woollen shirt sleeves, wiped
his wet cheeks. The slow, painful blush of age crept up across the iron
strength of his face, and passed. He looked away as he spoke.

"I knew it; I knew that. My Dan'l was like all that Frisco bunch. They
get tangled with women sooner or later. I taxed Dan'l with it. I
spleened against it and let him know it. But he was a man and his own
master--if you can rightly call a man his own master that does them
things. Do you know what-fur woman this one was, Billy?"

"Well, last time Dan'l J. was up to Skiplap, there was a swell party on
the car--kind of a coppery-lookin' blonde. Allie Ash, the brakeman on
No. 4, he tells me she used to be in Spokane, and now she'd got her
hooks on to some minin' property up in the Coeur d'Alene. Course, this
mightn't be the one."

The old man had ceased to listen. He was aroused to the need for