inside, talked to the telegraph operator. Steve trem- bled with anxiety. The man who had come to the sta- tion was an insurance agent who also owned a small berry farm at the edge of town. He had a son who had gone west to take up land in the state of Kansas, and the father thought of visiting him. He came to the station to make inquiry regarding the railroad fare, but when Steve saw him talking to Hugh, the thought came into his mind that John Clark or Thomas Butter- worth might have sent him to the station to make an investigation of the truth of the statements he had made in the bank. " It would be like them to do it that way," he muttered to himself. " They wouldn't come themselves. They would send some one they thought I wouldn't suspect. They would play safe, damn 'em." Trembling with fear, Steve walked up and down in the empty factory. Cobwebs hanging down brushed against his face and he jumped aside as though a hand had reached out of the darkness to touch him. In the corners of the old building shadows lurked and distorted thoughts began to come into his head. He rolled and lighted a cigarette and then remembered that the flare of the match could probably be seen from the station. He cursed himself for his careless- ness. Throwing the cigarette on the earth floor he ground it under his heel. When at last Dick Spears- man had disappeared up the road that led to Bidwell and he came out of the old factory and got again into Turner's Pike, he felt that he was in no shape to talk of business but nevertheless must act at once. In front of the factory he stopped in the road and tried to wipe the mud off the seat of his trousers with a
