A Fool For Love

d so delicately intimated to Miss Bessie Carteret, it was administered

f campaign wrote itself quite legibly. With his pick and choice among the time-killing expedients the Rajah could scarcely

s of the service, set forth in good Bostonian English for the benefit and behoof o

nk," was the besotted one's summing-up. "I know the Rajah doesn't split hairs in a bus

not be scoffed

matter touching his womankind, and I don't controvert it as a general proposition. But the Rajah has been a fighting Western railroad magnate s

chment without prejudice

orearmed. And Miss Virginia is not going to

good chance to take the conceit out of you, she'd improve it-without

es. I've met her only twice, yet I venture to say I know her bet

nded to argue further with a man besotted; an

s' prediction wrought itself out into sober fact. After the single appeal to force, Mr. Darrah seemed to give up the fight. None the less

givings there might easily have been an end, since the construction camp had nothing to offer in return. But the formalities we

y waking moment of the day and night was deeply mortgaged to the chance of success. For now that the Rajah had withdrawn his opposition, Nature and th

tal had to be hoisted out singly by a derrick erected for the purpose-a process which effectually blocked the track for three entire days. Next it was another landslide (unhelped by dynamite, this) just above the s

face-Winton would have fought all the more desperately for these hindrances. But, unfortunately, he was no longer an i

ief was making ready for his regular descent upon the Rosemary. "We shall have to put

he impatient rejoinder.

came and went in

u are just now. But I can prophesy what you are

, Adams went back to th

ll put a night gang on and bo

ow, Morty. And that's the plain fact

l never get the chance. When I let

and the prophet of evil was left to organize his night ass

e of the chief from working like a leaven of inertness among the men. Branagan voiced the situation in rich brogue one evening when Adams had exhausted his limited vocabulary of abuse on the force for its apathy. "'Tis no use, ava, Misther

ing Jubilates in the privacy of his working-den state-room, having tri-daily weather reports wired to him by way of Carbonate

ally. Then-but we picture the scene: Mr. Darrah late to his breakfast, being just in from an early-morning reconnaissance

bed his hands

mountain region, and nothing, practically nothing at all, accomplished on the otheh side of the canyon

ut, Uncle Somerville

jah la

innocent soul, if I were young Misteh Winton, I'm

-eyed now, and the blush h

n that I

h time Misteh Winton won't pay cou't to a cha'ming young girl and

lves swiftly, and Virginia's vo

he began, "in this-this despic

n a little to s

uch of the po-lice cou'ts. Let us say that Misteh Winton has found your company mo

o rashly lighted. Then Jastrow came in with one of the i

Winton would fail: a man with honor, good repute, his entire career at stake, as he himself had admitted, would go down to miserable oblivion and defeat, lacking so

found her writing materials. In such a crisis her methods could be as direct as a man'

t womanly in its failure to give even the remotest hint of the new and binding reason why he must not

everend Billy did not return directly to the Rosemary. On the contrary, he extended his tramp

h the immensities. To put it baldly, he was beginning to be desperately cloyed with th

es long past to another woman?-to a Cousin Virginia, let us say. And why must the Cousin Virginias, passing by the lifelong d

le time in a small upland valley where the two lines, old and new, ran para

e Colorado and Grand River main line, and crossing the Utah right of way at a broad angle. On this spur, at its point of inte

divagations. He had acquired the right of way across the Utah's line for his blockading spur; had taken advantage of Winton's inalert

uperior to his hamperings as a man and a lover. Here was defeat possible-nay, say rather defeat probable-for a rival, with the probability increasing with each hour of delay. Calvert fought it out by length and by breadth a dozen times before

tirely eliminated. But who can tell which motive it was that prompted him to turn aside before he came to the army of toilers at the slide: to turn

he C. G. R. side, he turned up the gulch at the back of Argentine and spent the better half of the afternoon tramping beneath the solemn spruces on the m

what it would come to in plain English. Beyond that I have no right to go: it is

have reached your goal, if reach it you may, will there be no remorseful looking back to thi

judicious manoeuvering, with a too-fond Bessie for an unconscious confederate, he managed t

story over again, of a woman's determination to know pitted against a truthful man's blundering efforts to conceal; and b

d lay hold of. But when the secret was hers she donned coat and headgear and went

ar door, Jastrow disappeared in the opposite direction, passing through the forward vestibule and dropping cat-like from t

starlight sufficed to show the watcher a shadowy Miss Virginia standing motionless on the side which gave her an outl

ow crunching frostily under his steady stride. Jastrow ducked under the platform and gained a viewpoint on the other side of the car. The crunching footfalls had ceased, and a man was swinging him

e again, and so to be out of the way when the engineer drew him

and and heard her exclamation, h

te: I told you

" he asserted. He was still holding her han

rds, but it was gone when she added: "Oh, why will you keep on coming

se I could not stay away if I should try. Forgive me, dear; I did not mean to speak so soon. But you said in your note that you would be leaving

y crouching for the spring if her answer should urge it on. But w

passionately; and Winton staggered as if t