Strangely Entangled

Roy Glashan's Library
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CHARLES CAREY WADDELL
(WRITING AS CHARLES CAREY)

STRANGELY ENTANGLED

First published in The Argosy, January 1907

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2025
Version Date: 2025-03-14

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The Argosy, January 1907,
with "Strangely Entangled"

Certain remarkable experiences that came to a man
following up his own past on a slender thread....

Chapter I. A Man Without Kindred.
Chapter II. A Scraped Acquaintance And A Big Surprise.
Chapter III. Some Information By The Way.
Chapter IV. An Appalling Prospect.
Chapter V. By The Air Route.
Chapter VI. A Prisoner Of Fate.
Chapter VII. A Startling Discovery.
Chapter VIII. A Strange Disappearance.
Chapter IX. The Man In The Picture.
Chapter X. What Blair Told The Directors.

I. — A MAN WITHOUT KINDRED.

ELLIS BLAIR, secretary and general manager of the Great Atlantic Exporting and Importing Company, has been mysteriously missing for the past ten days, and despite the most rigorous search, no clue can be obtained as to his present whereabouts.

None of the usual reasons for such a disappearance seem to apply in this case, nor does there seem good cause to suspect foul play. Indeed, the man's friends and business associates profess to be at their wits' end to offer any explanation whatever for the strange affair.

ELLIS BLAIR was like Topsy. For all he knew to the contrary, he had "just growed."

A friend of his, a writer of stories for the magazines, looking enviously at him, one day, remarked: "What an ideal character for fiction you would make, Blair! In working out a plot and concealing necessary circumstances one is always butting into some aunt, or cousin, or sister who by the very nature of things would have to be acquainted with the real facts; but you seem to have no kinsfolk of any kind. Long as I have known you, I have never heard you mention a single relative."

Blair brushed over the implied question with a hurried laugh. He was a little sensitive about the mystery of his origin, and never referred to it.

"I—a character for fiction?" he cried, reverting to his companion's earlier words. "Absurd! Why, there isn't any more romance about me than there is about a bank-book. I am simply a plodding, prosaic man of business."

In this estimate of himself he spoke nothing but the truth. A man of business he was, and a man of business he had been since the time he was fifteen years old.

He could well recall the circumstances which had led to his entering upon a commercial career. His teacher had kept him in at school because he had refused to commit to memory a piece of poetry which had been given to the class as an exercise.

At dinner, that evening, old Horace McCutcheon, with whom he made his home, inquired as to what had made him so late; and Ellis, with a boyish assumption of having been treated with injustice, told of his clash with the teacher.

"But why wouldn't you learn the piece for her?" questioned the old man curiously.

"Aw, what's the use?" growled the boy disgustedly. "That sort of stuff don't earn you any money. Now, 'rithmetic or j'ography—there's some sense to that."

McCutcheon made no answer to this outburst, but sat several moments studying the boy in silence underneath his bushy brows. Finally he asked irrelevantly: "How old are you, Ellis?"

"And this is March," smiled Mr. McCutcheon; " so you are in fact just turned fifteen. "I had not thought," he added musingly, "that you were quite so old."

He said nothing more at the time, but during the remainder of the evening he was plainly absorbed in meditation. The next morning he told Ellis that if he so desired he might give up school and take a position in the store.

"I never believed in driving an unwilling horse to water," he said; "and I judge from your remarks last night that your inclination lies more toward commercial lines."

Young Blair was enchanted at the prospect. He cared nothing for books; his only ambition was to be doing things which were of "some use." He took more pride in the humble position accorded him than a French poet would upon his election to the "Academy of the Immortals."

Ellis's teachers had complained of his laziness and inattention; there was no ground for any such criticism on his deportment in his new vocation. He was always on hand, always prompt, always accurate, always willing.

The truth was, the boy had "found himself." The bent of his mind was toward a business life, and in any other environment he was like a fish out of water.

For six years he worked under Mr. McCutcheon's directing eye, and proved himself so faithful, discreet, and intelligent that he was finally advanced to the position of confidential man in the concern, second in importance only to the head of the house.

Then, a few more days before Ellis's twenty-first birthday, his employer died suddenly as the result of an apoplectic stroke, never recovering consciousness from the moment of his seizure. His will made Ellis Blair the sole legatee of his estate, but, strangely enough, did not mention or intimate in any way the existence of a relationship between them.

Nor did a comprehensive search of his papers and effects throw any further light upon this question. In fact, no papers were found of a date earlier than that on which he had appeared in New York, some nineteen years before.

He had then been a man over forty years of age; but so completely had he burned his bridges behind him, so sedulously did he seem to have destroyed every trace which might have given a hint as to his former career, that his executors and heir had at last to confess themselves baffled—hopelessly perplexed.

Blair, especially, took pains to investigate all possible sources of information; but in no case was he able to unearth the slightest clue. McCutcheon's bankers remembered only that he had come to them without introduction or reference of any kind other than the rather heavy deposit he had tendered them, which was, strangely enough, all in currency, and which he brought to them in a little satchel.

His housekeeper, who had lived with him for years, stated that he had given her no information concerning himself, simply employing her to care for the brownstone mansion which he bought in a retired neighborhood, and to look after the little two-year-old boy who formed the other member of his household.

The friends and business associates he had made were equally ignorant. Never, to the remembrance of any of them, had McCutcheon fallen into the least reference to his past, or to his manner of life before coming among them.

Even the old register of the hotel at which the man first stopped upon his arrival in New York, when hunted out and examined, gave no enlightening hint. The inscription upon its yellowed pages simply ran: "Horace McCutcheon and boy, New York."

Nor, finally, to Ellis himself had the old merchant ever unbosomed himself, either as to the origin of either of them or as to the ties of blood, if any, which existed between them.

As the boy had grown older and had begun to comprehend something of the anomalous position in which he stood, he had more than once pressed for an explanation, but had always been put off with the promise that all would be told him on his twenty-first birthday.

Now, by the interposition of death, this promise had been nullified; leaving Blair with nothing but an interrogation-mark to answer who he was or whence he came.

To the young man, brought face to face with the problem, none of the usual explanations that might account for such an association as that between McCutcheon and himself seemed to apply.

He had never been taught to call his protector "papa," or "uncle," or "guardian," or any other name which might designate a relationship between them, but simply "Mr. McCutcheon." Nor had the manner of McCutcheon ever hinted at the tie of kinship. He had been uniformly kind and indulgent to the boy, it is true; but always in a detached, impersonal way, and without the slightest suggestion of a parental character.

Another strange circumstance was that he had never held out to Blair any expectation that he intended making the latter his heir, but, on the contrary, had always rather intimated that in due time the boy would have to shuffle for himself.

Once, in a rarely confidential mood, he had said while on this subject: "I do not want you to build any false hopes by reason of our association, Ellis. There are others who have a better right to my money than you."

No, try as he might, Blair could discover no solution to the enigma. Self-contained, reticent, secretive, Horace McCutcheon had left no key which by any manipulation seemed able to open that closed door to his past.

As to Ellis's own recollections of.his brief infancy prior to arrival in New York, they were vague, shadowy, and confused. He did have a faint memory of other surroundings than those which had become so familiar to him in his later childhood; of a place where there were trees and flowers, and cows and horses.

He could also dimly recall the sweet face of a woman who had leaned over him as he lay in his little crib, and remembered, too, a long journey he had taken under the care of McCutcheon; but where this place was, or who the woman, or whence the journey, he was naturally unable to determine.

He did not even know, as he told himself, that his benefactor's real name had been McCutcheon, or his own Ellis Blair. Nor, he finally became satisfied, would he ever know. The curtain was irrevocably drawn, the door closed.

Whether behind it lurked the shadow of a crime or a great and overmastering sorrow, or merely the whim of an odd man's eccentricity, he would never learn.

Convinced at last of this fact, Blair gave no further consideration to the matter, but absorbed himself in those business schemes which were his delight and his passion. He had a free hand now to put into execution all the ambitious projects which he had long cherished, but from which he had hitherto been restrained by the conservatism of McCutcheon.

He organized a stock company, installed himself as secretary and general manager, and in the short space of five years made it the largest and most powerful institution of its kind in the world.

He had agents in every commercial center upon the face of the globe, he handled everything in the line of merchandise from false teeth to locomotives, he maintained a banking and financial department of high rating, operated a line of coasting and also of ocean steamers, and even published a trade journal devoted to the interests of his establishment. And over all this he, a young man not yet twenty-six years old, ruled with an absolute hand.

It goes without saying, however, that such results were not brought about save-by hard work. Ellis Blair never spared himself, and he permitted no shirking on the part of his subordinates. Knowing his business from the ground up, he was well aware of the precise amount of work due him from each of his employees, and he exacted it in full measure.

He was business all day and every day. Business with him was a hobby— his delight, his pleasure, his pastime.

He saw his wealth pile up, and his influence grow; but he did not on that account relax in the slightest degree his strenuous energy, nor did he change his habits. He kept on living in the old brownstone house which had been bequeathed to him by Horace McCutcheon, and he plunged into none of those extravagances which ordinarily separate a young man of means from his money.

He abjured society entirely, and it is doubtful if he spoke to a woman, outside of his stenographer and his housekeeper, once in a twelvemonth. His tastes were quiet and simple, his friends few and mostly of the same character as himself, and his routine as rigorous as that of a soldier.

In short, he lived solely for his business—not for what his business might bring him, but for the love of the business itself.

True, he fitted up for himself a most expensive gymnasium, and every evening, whenever the weather permitted, took a long ride on his bicycle; but this was all a part of his scheme. His health was necessary to the proper conduct of his affairs; therefore, he safeguarded his health by these methods.

l"or the same reason, although sorely against his will, he forced himself, every summer, to take a three weeks' vacation; and in order to get the full benefit of these occasions, always made a long, solitary trip awheel. From these jaunts lie would return browned, clear-eyed, refreshed, ready to take up another year of his unremitting toil.

Thus it happened that, August having come around again, and the appointed time for his period of .recreation, Blair started to plan out a route. He had about decided that this year he would try a run up through New England, and if pressed for time on his return would come back by boat from Portland.

It was the evening of the day before his departure, and he was packing some necessary articles—a change of linen and the like—into the traveling-case which lie carried on his bicycle.

For this purpose, he started to get something out of a drawer in the old-fashioned bureau which stood in his room —the same room, it may be remarked, that McCutcheon had used prior to the time of his death—but, to his annoyance, found that the drawer stuck.

An impatient jerk at the handles loosened it, but its obstinacy aroused his curiosity sufficiently to make him examine the aperture. Then he found that a fragment of an old letter had fallen down behind and worked its way into the slide.

The paper was so torn by his efforts to pull the drawer open, and the ink so paled by time, that he was unable to decipher any of the body of the missive; but across the top he could make out faintly, in a woman's delicate handwriting, the word "Yoctangee," followed by a date corresponding to that of the year in which McCutcheon had first come to New York.

Inspired now by a lively conception, Ellis ransacked the old bureau from top to bottom, almost tearing it to pieces in his eager search; but the only reward he achieved was to get himself covered with dust and lint. Not another scrap of paper lurked within its recesses.

Then he tried a strong glass upon his find, in the hope that he might thus reconstruct some of its faded sentences; but this proved equally fruitless. All that he could hope to glean from his discovery was the simple name and the date.

"It's useless," he finally muttered, pushing the torn and illegible letter away from him. "Anyway, it simply opens up the old question which I had resolved never to let bother me again."

With that he completed his preparations for his trip and went to bed; but before doing so he carefully folded up the letter and placed it in an inner compartment of his pocket-book.

The next morning he was up betimes, and leaving a few final directions with his housekeeper, started off, following the course of those streets and avenues which now form the route once covered by the old Boston post-road.

It was one of those fresh, clear mornings when ail nature seems to cry to the wayfarer, "Come, rejoice with me;"but Blair appeared oblivious to the beauty of the day. He pedaled steadily along, his brows bent in thought, so heedless of his surroundings, indeed, that more than once he only narrowly escaped collision with some passing vehicle.

"Yoctangee? Yoctangee?" he kept muttering to himself. "Where in the dickens have I heard that name before?"

"Is it the name of a city, a hamlet, or merely of some private manor?" he wondered.

Engrossed in these conjectures, he reeled off several miles, then suddenly halted and threw back his head, as though an inspiration had presented itself to him. His decision was evidently quickly taken. He turned his wheel and rode back along his route faster than he had come.

Directly to the Grand Central Station he proceeded, and there sought the bureau of information.

"Yoctangee?" returned the man at the desk. "Oh, yes; quite a thriving little city out in Ohio by that name."

The functionary, with one eye on the time-table, rattled off succinct directions, and Blair, noting the hour of the train mentioned as the best one to take, glanced apprehensively at his watch. He had only five minutes in which to make it.

He hesitated just a second; then, with an air of quick determination, he strode over to the ticket-office.

II. — A SCRAPED ACQUAINTANCE AND A BIG SURPRISE.

ONCE seated in the Pullman, and gliding smoothly along by the Hudson on his way toward Albany, Blair had an opportunity to reflect upon the enterprise which he had so impulsively undertaken.

He was an exceptionally methodical and orderly person in his mental processes, and consequently such a harebrained venture as this was entirely foreign to his disposition.

Not that he was slow in decision, for no man could have succeeded so wonderfully in business who was of faltering or procrastinating habits, but he preserved-a proper and judicious caution; he was accustomed to turn a subject over and inspect both sides of it before he definitely made up his mind. Now, however, he had rushed off on the spur of a moment, acting, as he told himself, with the heedless impetuosity of a boy.

"What have I to go on?" he asked himself. "The mere name of a town, and a date which appears coincidental. How do I know that the writer of that letter had any knowledge of the antecedents of McCutcheon or myself? It may have been upon the most indifferent topics. Furthermore, what assurance have I that there is any chance of tracing up this unknown feminine correspondent of old Horace's? A lot of changes can take place in twenty years; and even though she may have lived in Yoctangee at that time, she may now be dead, or long since moved away.

"Nor will direct inquiry concerning McCutcheon be likely to help me, since it is more than probable that the name he bore was an assumed one, and that my own is also. Finally, am I not a fool to try to rake up a possibly shameful past? Is it not far better to let sleeping dogs lie? In short, is not this wild-goose chase of mine about the craziest hazard that a sane man ever entered upon?"

Excellent logic, all of it; but Ellis Blair was not one who, having put his hand to the plow, could be easily induced to turn back, and even as he reasoned the case out he was more than ever confirmed in his determination to pursue his suddenly taken purpose.

There was a chance, if nothing else, that he might learn something; this letter was the first definite clue ever afforded him to penetrate the veil of mystery which enveloped his birth; and his curiosity forbade him stopping short of anything less than a full investigation.

But suppose he did find out? The thought kept obtruding upon his mind. Suppose he were able to unearth the whole truth? Would it make him any happier, or more at ease? Common sense seemed inevitably to answer, No.

Blair's mind reverted whimsically to those humorous cartoons he had so often laughed over in the evening papers wherein some unfortunate wight is gradually raised to the pinnacle of his desires and then suddenly let drop with a dull, sickening thud.

He found himself unconsciously paraphrasing their legends to fit his own case: "Suppose you had inherited some money, and by using it judiciously had elevated yourself to a position of wealth and influence in the metropolis; and suppose you had always regarded in a romantic light a certain mystery in your life. If you suddenly discovered that this mystery was only a cloak to cover up disgrace, and that the basis of your fortune was actually gained by sneak-thievery—wouldn't it jar you?"

He had always been a model of rectitude in his dealings. He was proud of the reputation for integrity that he had won—proud of the fact that men were more willing to accept his simple word than many another man's bond; and he shrank from the possible stigma of dishonor being attached to that honorable name.

Nevertheless, he wavered not a whit in his decision to carry this thing through. He shut his teeth hard, and told himself that if there were any way of doing it he was at last going to find out just who and what he was, no matter how personally unpalatable the truths of such a discovery might prove to be.

Having arrived at this conclusion, he characteristically dismissed the subject from his mind for the present, and prepared to bury himself in a magazine which he had bought from the train-boy.

During the course of his reverie he had been gazing steadily out of the window, his brows bent into a frown, his gaze disinterestedly taking in the changing panorama of river scenery as it flew along.

Now, however, as he turned about in his seat, his eyes met squarely those of a young woman who sat facing him a few feet farther along the aisle. Thereafter it was useless for him even to pretend an interest in his book. At every page he found himself raising his glance for a sly peep at this neighbor of his.

It has been remarked hitherto, I believe, that Blair cared little for feminine society. Strange as it may appear, this young man of twenty-six had never in all his life had an experience even approximating to a love-affair.

At last, however, the little blind god was about to take full requital for all those snubs and slights which had been imposed upon him.

The first glance from those laughing blue eyes struck Blair like a shock of five hundred volts of. electricity. The second glance he took at her confirmed him in his previous impression—that she was the loveliest creature who had ever donned a sailor hat and a trim traveling-costume. At the third glance he was hopelessly, drivelingly, head over heels in love.

The first effect of his new state was to render him morbidly conscious of his own appearance. A sudden suspicion shot into his brain that, owing to his wild rush to catch the train, his hair might be tousled, and even—oh, horrible conjecture!—that his face might be slightly dirty.

He groaned in spirit, and cursed his economical tendencies, because he had not seen fit to provide himself with new raiment before setting out on his trip.

Just then, in stealing another peep, he chanced to intercept a glance of the girl bestowed in his own direction, which served to barb the criticisms he had just been passing.

Coloring to the roots of his hair, he leaped out of his seat and dived down the aisle toward the dressing-room, where he spent a good fifteen minutes in reducing his curly mop to submission and in brushing up his attire until it looked as if it had just come out of the hands of a valet.

Then, with an air of fine preoccupation, he sauntered back to his seat and resumed the fascinating pastime of casting sheep's-eyes at his divinity.

The girl's mien was utterly unconscious. She stared fixedly out of the window for the most part, only occasionally allowing her gaze to stray indifferently hither and thither about the car; but another of her sex would have augured much from the fact that never once did any of these casual glances venture in the direction of Blair.

Another woman would also have noticed frequent surreptitious peeps into the panel mirror between the windows, followed by apparently careless, but none the less coquettish, little pats at her hair or at the bow she wore at her throat.

There was no lolling upon a pillow on the arm of the car-seat for this girl; no disheveled hair, nor disarrayed garments. She sat straight up, not stiffly, but with a lithe erectness which bespoke an independent nature; and she was as spick and span as though she had just stepped out of a bandbox.

Even Blair's unsophisticated eye readily perceived that she was not one of the lolling kind.

She might not be a very large personage, but she gave the impression that she was abundantly able to take care of herself. There was a freshness and a wholesomeness about her—an alert, businesslike decision in all her movements— which pointed her out as a kindred spirit to Ellis and especially appealed to him.

She had smooth, glossy, dark hair, a clear olive complexion, and, as already stated, honest blue eyes, with a glint of laughter in their depths. Her chin was strong enough to imply that she had a very pretty will of her own and her nose was rather uncompromising; but her mouth betrayed the woman.

It was the mouth of a typical Irish colleen—framed for laughter, and coaxing, and kisses.

Just at present, however, the rose-leaf curves of that mouth were drawn into a prim, straight line, and mademoiselle's whole attitude and bearing announced very plainly that she was not to be inveigled into flirting with the good-looking young stranger across the way, no matter how wildly the little blind god might be scampering around in the vicinity.

She took a paper and pencil out of her bag and sedulously absorbed herself in the toting up of some figures, apparently totally oblivious to the brown eyes on the other side of the car which were so humbly pleading for recognition.

But the little blind god has a way of arranging these matters without asking any one's consent, and presently a playful gust of wind whisked in at the open window, tore the paper out of the fair calculator's hand, and bore it triumphantly across the car to deposit it directly at Ellis Blair's feet.

Picking it up, he stalked solemnly across the aisle and poked it at her without a word. He was really so embarrassed that he could not frame a sentence to save his soul; his face flamed up as red as a boiled lobster.

The girl gravely thanked him, and resumed her interrupted calculations. He kicking himself, figuratively speaking, over his failure to take advantage of his opportunities, hastily sought the seclusion of the smoking-compartment, and there spent the remainder of the day in solitary penance.

But fate was kinder to him than he deserved. When he went to the dining-car for dinner that evening he found only one seat vacant, and that at a table already occupied by the fascinating unknown.

Awkwardly he slid into it, hardly daring to lift his eyes to her face; but when he did so he was raised to the seventh heaven of bliss, for she greeted him with a curt little nod of recognition. True,, she did not follow this up by any further unbending, and Ellis was too shy to offer any advances on his own part; but, nevertheless, all that evening he was in vastly better cheer.

The ice had been broken between them, and he promised himself with that unyielding determination for which he was famous that it should remain in that state.

By skilful maneuvering and a system of generous "tipping" he managed to reproduce the same conditions at breakfast on the following morning.

Once more did he sit down with the young lady as his vis-à-vis. She bowed, as before)f?and after that, as before, concerted herself entirely with the viands spread before her. Blair had to confess that he was not making much progress. The meal progressed in a silence so thick that it could be felt.

Finally, the girl having successfully extricated a boiled egg from its shell, glanced up at him with a mirthful flash in her blue eyes.

"Why are you so set" on knowing me?" she asked coolly. "I confess I am all at sea. Ever since yesterday morning you have been making the most strenuous attempts to provoke an acquaintance; yet you are not at all the type of the traveling 'masher.' If you were," she added, surveying him judicially, "you might be better on to your job."

Now, a straight attack of this sort, right out from the shoulder, was the surest way in the world to put Blair at his ease. Of a frank and open disposition himself, he could understand and meet candor in another.

No longer flustered and embarrassed, he returned her questioning gaze with an ingenuous and friendly smile.

"I guess I am not much of a diplomat," he laughed, "to have given away my hand to you as easily as that. You are right, though; I have been trying to scrape an acquaintance with you. Why? I don't know, unless it is that I saw we were both traveling alone and I thought that perhaps we might be able to mutually lighten the tedium of a long journey.

"You haven't," she replied calmly; "not at all. I have simply been thinking how foolish it was that you should have had to go to so much trouble and artifice in order to get to speak a few words with me. Now, if I had been a man you would have thought nothing of stepping across the aisle and entering into conversation with me, nor would I have felt the least restraint about addressing another woman. Why, then, should we have sat dumb as stone bottles merely because we happen to belong to opposite sexes? It is downright idiocy."

Ellis was not slow to take advantage of the opening thus afforded him, and he fairly surprised himself by the quickness and flow of his speech under the stimulating influence of her interest.

They finished the breakfast, so stiffly begun, in a gale of animated conversation, and when they adjourned once more to the sleeper the girl obligingly moved over her belongings so as to make room for him to sit beside her.

In the course of one of their discussions it came out that she was a business woman, the head of an establishment for the manufacture of automobiles, and he was surprised on probing her to find out what a complete and comprehensive grasp she had of the conditions of that industry.

"It seems a funny kind of an enterprise for a woman to be in, doesn't it?" she commented. "But I have been brought up to it, in a way. I received all my business training in one of the first automobile factories established in this country, and so got to know the ins and outs of the trade. Consequently, when I came into a legacy and decided to start out on my own hook nothing was more natural than that I should continue in the same line. I have a partner," she explained, "who looks after the mechanical end of the concern, while I run the office."

"Oh, yes. Even more than we hoped for. In fact, it is on account of our big success that I am making this trip. We've got to enlarge our plant, you see, and we have received several offers of bonuses and inducements to move it elsewhere. I am on my road now to investigate an offer which has been made us at Yoctangee."

"Really? And, if it isn't being too inquisitive, what business is taking you out to Yoctangee?"

"Oh," stammered the man, "I want —that is, there are one or two people there I would like to interview."

"I see," nodding her head sagely. "That's a polite way of telling me that it's none of my business. All right; I merely asked because I thought I might be able to put you on to one or two things about the people you are going to meet. You see, I came from that town myself, originally, and I know about everybody in the place."

"You do?" cried Ellis excitedly. "Then perhaps you may have heard of a man who once lived there by the name of McCutcheon?"

"No "—striving to recollect—"I don't think there were ever any McCutcheons there. At least, none that I ever knew of."

III. — SOME INFORMATION BY THE WAY.

A HUNDRED eager questions trembled on the tip of Blair's tongue, but he did not have time to ask them, for just at that opportune moment the conductor poked his head in at the. door, with the stentorian announcement: "Columbus! Change cars!"

A glance out of the window revealed to him the presence of streets and houses. Indeed, they were rapidly running into Ohio's capital city, and already the passengers were hastily collecting their belongings and submitting to the mercenary ministrations of the porter.

Ellis assisted his companion to gather up her various parcels, and insisted on carrying her suit-case up the steps and along the platform.

"Perhaps you know what we have to do now in order to reach our common destination," he remarked as he trudged along beside her; "for my part, I have to confess that I came away in such a rush I didn't have time to inquire."

"To be sure, I know," she responded gaily. "This part of the world is my native heath, you must understand, and if you will only follow my lead you are certain not to go wrong. We must wait here for a half-hour or so, and then we will take passage on the D. N. and Q., a little jerk-water road, which, if we have luck, will get us home about four o'clock this afternoon. Yoctangee is only about a hundred miles away; but—

"O-oh!" she suddenly interrupted herself, and stopped short to gaze in chagrin at a legend chalked large upon the big bulletin-board which announced the arrival and departure of trains.

This stated simply that on account of heavy floods and the destruction of a bridge on its lower division, all trains over the D.N. and Q. would be annulled for that day.

With that he hurried off to seek some one in authority; but he was destined to extract little comfort from the report given him.

An official, tired out by a long stream of questioners, curtly informed him that there had been heavy rains in the lower part of the State—one of those summer freshets which turn the usually placid watercourses of that region into raging torrents for the time being. Owing to these floods, a bridge or two had been swept out, and the D.N. and Q. was consequently unable to furnish service.

Blair returned to his companion with a despondent visage; but all the same there was a tumultuous joy in his heart.

By stress of this unlooked-for delay their unconventional comradeship would have to be maintained on its present basis for a day, perhaps two days, longer. Providence had seen fit to maroon them together on a foreign shore; and, whether she wished to or not, she would have to rely upon his masculine guardianship.

"I am afraid there is no possible show for us to get out to-day," he said, with hypocritical grumblings; "they say they may be able to run a train through tomorrow, but even that is uncertain. Furthermore, as all other roads in that direction are in the same box, there seems no feasible way of going around. So I guess all there is left for us is to go to some hotel and possess our souls in patience until the D. N. and Q. sees fit to let us leave."

"Ye-es," she admitted hesitatingly, "under the circumstances, that does seem about the only thing to do."

But while they stood debating their colloquy was suddenly interrupted by the swish of feminine draperies, and the next moment a fashionably attired young woman cast herself upon Evelyn with loud and excited vociferations.

"Why, Evelyn Blair!" she exclaimed. "Of all persons in the world! I saw you from across the station only this minute; but I just knew that I couldn't be mistaken. Papa and I were going back home"—talking very fast and at the top of her lungs—"because that bothersome old train isn't going to Yoctangee. And at the door somebody stepped on the tail of my gown, and I turned around and saw you. Just think! If it hadn't been for that blessed man walking all over my skirt I would never have known that you were in town."

Ellis inwardly cursed the awkward blunderer who had served as deus ex machina for this reunion.

"But why are you here?" rattled on the strange girl. "Though, of course it's because you are in the same box as ourselves and can't get down to Yoctangee. Well, they say that maybe there won't be a train out for a week, so you'll just have to come out to our house and stay until there is one. You didn't know we were living in Columbus now, did you? Papa and I moved up here more than a year ago."

"I had thought of going to an hotel," demurred Evelyn diffidently, when at last she was able to edge in a word.

"Go to an hotel, indeed," protested the other indignantly, "when we are living right here in the city? I'd just like to see you try anything of the kind! Why, I've got loads and loads of things to tell you. No; you'll stay at our house and nowhere else, if we have to drag you out there by main force. PI ere comes papa, now, to help me tell you so."

And she frisked lightly off to seize upon a solid, elderly looking gentleman with gray side-whiskers who was making his way slowly through the crowded station toward them.

Evelyn had been so taken aback by the sudden assault upon her that she seemed to have quite forgotten the presence of her cavalier, who during the interlude stood humbly to one side with the grips in his hands; but now she turned to him with swift interrogation.

"For Heaven's sake, tell me your name," she demanded, in a rapid aside. "I haven't the slightest idea in the world."

Not comprehending the reason of this request, and forgetting that in their short acquaintance he had never vouchsafed to her any name whatever, he responded in a flurried way: "Ellis. My name is Ellis."

A moment later he divined the purpose of the question and would eagerly have corrected himself, but it was then too late. The strange girl had come up, dragging her father triumphantly in tow.

"Papa backs me up," she announced breezily, "so you would better come quietly, Evelyn, dear, and not make any fuss about it. You don't know how terrible papa can be when he is crossed."

Evelyn laughed gaily up into the kindly face of the old gentleman. "How do you do, Mr. Mason?" she said, stretching out her hand to him. "If you aren't careful this daughter of yours will be giving you a bad reputation."

"Oh, nobody pays any heed to what she says," he responded lightly; "but for this once she does happen to be right. You are going to make your stay with us while you are in Columbus. Neither of us will listen to any other plan."

"Well, there is no need for you all to be so emphatic about it," returned Evelyn, with a saucy smile. "I assure you, I never had the slightest idea of declining the invitation. In fact, I am only too glad to find such a haven. But let me present Mr. Ellis, who has been more than kind to me on the way out, and who is also held here by the floods."

"Bad state of affairs down the road, I guess," commented the older man to Ellis. "Hope you are not greatly inconvenienced by the tie-up? If you are held in town for any., length of time, pray come out and see us. My daughter and I will both be delighted; and she generally manages to have some young folks around to make things interesting."

"For once I find myself superior to fate," he explained, "and even the failure of the entire train service is powerless to stop me. I have my bicycle with me, and I shall consequently push on to Yoctangee awheel. It is only about a hundred miles, I hear, and with any kind of roads that is no run at all."

"No, I suppose not," assented Mr. Mason. "And as for the roads, there is an excellent turnpike all the way. You shouldn't have the least trouble for the first seventy-five miles, anyway. Down in the Yoctangee valley, where they have been having the rains, you may find a few bridges out and the going a bit uncomfortable, but for the most part, I fancy, you will have a very enjoyable trip."

"At any rate," rejoined Ellis, "the possible lions in my path are not so portentous to me as they would be to a railroad-train. A cyclist can always find some way to get around."

And with that he bowed to Mr. Mason and lifted his cap to the daughter. With Evelyn he shook hands warmly.

"Remember, our acquaintanceship does not end here," he murmured ardently. "I shall certainly look you up as soon as you arrive in Yoctangee."

Nor did the glance which she raised to him above their clasped hands refuse him the permission he craved.

He hurried off, then, to get his wheel out of the baggage-car, place himself outside of a hearty lunch, and make a few other simple preparations for the journey.

With the aid of a good road-book which he purchased at the news-stand in the depot he figured out that he ought easily to be able to make three-quarters of the distance by sunset that evening. In fact, he was confident that by a little extra exertion he could have completed the entire century; but from what he had heard of the possible condition of the roads, as one approached hearer Yoctangee, prudence forbade so risky an attempt except in the full light of day.

Accordingly, he decided to spend the night at Bainville, a little village some twenty-five or thirty miles removed from his destination.

When he reached there in good time and found an excellent tavern, with good, clean accommodations, and a smoking-hot country supper awaiting him, he was more than ever satisfied with his discretion; and, the meal having been thoroughly discussed, in high good humor with himself and the world in general he joined a group of local citizens who were lounging on the veranda of the hostelry, their chairs tilted back against the wall.

The chief topic of conversation among them was naturally that of the existing floods; and Ellis, remarked curiously on the havoc reported, since the country through which he had passed, so far as he could see, did not appear to be especially inundated.

"That's all right around here, stranger, and up the road," granted one of the company, "but you jest wait till you git on t'other side o' the Divide, an' then you'll see enough water to last you fur the rest o' your life. The Yoctangee's been on a turr'ble rampage.

"I seen Si Jones, 'safternoon, over by Wheaton's," he added, turning to the others, "an' he says that if she raises a couple more inches all the levees 'twixt Yoctangee an' Portsmouth'll go."

"But she ain't goin' to raise no couple o' more inches," scoffed one of his auditors; "that is, unless it'd rain some more to-morrer. She was on a stand at four o'clock this afternoon, an' Clarence, down at the station, told me that the D.N. and Q. was a-goin' to try an' git a train through to-morrer mornin'."

"You don*t"-suppose I will have any trouble in getting over to Yoctangee to-morrow?" queried Ellis, a little anxiously.

"He'll have to go about five miles out of his road, jest t'other side o' the Divide, though," put in another informant. "That bridge over Dry Run went out yiste'day. Ef it wasn't fur that"— turning to Ellis—" you c'd have clean sailin' right through into town."

Blair had his road-book, with its map, out on his knee by this time, and this friendly, soul, leaning over his shoulder, traced out the course for him with a horny forefinger.

"This here's the main road, you see," he explained in a running commentary, "an' here's Dry Run a zigzaggin' along jus' other side o' the Divide, and down here at the foot o' the hill is where the bridge is gone. 'Cordin'ly, you'll have to take this road to the left back here at the forks, an' that'll carry you around in a loop past McConnell's an' Bill Seney's, until you hit the main pike again at the old Ellis Blair place."

"The 'old Ellis Blair place'?" repeated the young man amazedly. "Is there a man by the name of Ellis Blair in this neighborhood?"

"Well, not jest now there ain't," responded the other dryly. "Ellis Blair's been dead fur goin' on to about three year now. Why?" he asked with bucolic curiosity. "Did you ever know him?"

"No," returned Ellis indifferently, since he saw that his manner had drawn their attention to him. "It was merely that the name struck me as a familiar one. I used to know an Ellis Blair in New York. I don't suppose, however," he added tentatively, "that this was any relation. The man I knew was about my own age."

"No-o," he said slowly. "Ellis didn't never have no sons, that I ever heern tell of. That is, unless you'd call that daughter, Evvie, of his'n a son. She's spry enough to be a man, I tell you that. Why, she's in business fur herself, makin' ottymobiles over in Noo York. Say, you're from there? Mebbe you might 'a' met her some time?"

But Blair was spared answering the question, for just then an elderly member of the group, who had not hitherto taken part in the conversation, broke in:

"What's that you were sayin', Zach?" he observed. "That Ellis Blair didn't have no sons? What are you talkin' about? Didn't you ever hear that there was a boy by his first wife? He was only a little shaver—'bout two years old, I guess—when his maw died; an' Ellis was so broke up over her death that he let his brother-in-law adopt him. Then, when he got married again an' wanted the child back, he couldn't git him. I've heern folks say that there was an awful row about it, an' that, owin' to some defect in the papers, Ellis might 'a' got him by law; but before he c'd git the matter into the courts the brother-in-law skipped out with the kid, an' they never heard hide nor hair of him again."

"Hell, now, I don't know that I ever heerd," replied the old man. "He didn't never live in these parts, and—"

The graybeard pondered several minutes, but was at last obliged to shake his head.

"It might have been that, an' then, again, it mightn't. I'll tell you, though—"with a happy inspiration—"if you're anxious to find out you'd ought to be able to git at it over at the court-house in Yoctangee. They'd likely be some kind of a record of the adoption on file."

"Oh, it's nothing that I am particularly keen on," he replied indifferently. "I simply got interested in the matter from hearing the name of my friend."

A short time after he bade the party good night and started for bed. When he inquired for his key the landlord of the tavern pushed a dog-eared ledger across the counter toward him, and a sputtering pen.

The guest hesitated just a second, and then seizing the pen, dashed across the fly-specked page, "B. Ellis, New York." He had fastened to himself with his own hand the alias which had been given him by mistake in the Columbus railroad station.

The quarters allotted to him in the little hotel proved, on closer acquaintance, even better than they had appeared at first inspection. The bed was roomy, clean, and comfortable. After his seventy-five-mile ride he should almost immediately have dropped off to sleep; yet for some reason slumber seemed determined not to visit his eyelids.

In view of all the circumstances, he could not well doubt but that it was his own story he had heard related that evening—that he himself was the infant whom Ellis Blair, in the desolation of his grief, had handed over to the guardianship of an uncle, and that this uncle who had so tenaciously insisted on the bargain was none other than Horace McCutcheon.

But those facts should not have kept him restless and awake. Indeed, he should have been vastly relieved at this explanation of the affair, for it certainly set at rest all those uneasy apprehensions with which he had started out upon his quest.

No, that was not what troubled his mind. It was, rather, that the reflection had suddenly come to him that if this story were true, then Evelyn Blair must be his own half-sister.

IV. — AN APPALLING PROSPECT.

DESPITE his tossings upon his pillow, the pure country air so invigorated Ellis that he was up bright and early in the morning, and ready to start upon his journey. The day dawned clear; but there was a haziness along the horizon, an early sultriness in the atmosphere, which drew forth gloomy forebodings from the landlord.

"I misdoubt me that the rains ain't all over yit," he observed, with a weatherwise squint toward the sky, as he came out on the veranda to speed the parting guest. "You're liable to run into a thunder-storm afore you git down to Yoctangee."

"Oh, well," returned Ellis cheerily, "if I do, I can no doubt find shelter somewhere along the road, and in any case," with an expressive glance at his well-worn outing costume, "I probably sha'n't melt."

He was not so sure of this latter assertion, however, before he had proceeded many miles, although his doubts were raised from a very different cause. In other words, he found it inexpressibly, undeniably, hot. The sun blazed down upon him with an almost tropic intensity.

He did not mind the heat so much, at first, for the earlier stages of his journey lay through a country as level as a floor, and here he made rapid progress; but presently, as he approached the range of hills which bound the northern limits of the valley of the Yoctangee, he ran into a very different proposition. The grade became steadily steeper, his pace less and less swift.

He could see looming up before him, now, the wooded peak of a lofty eminence, which stood out above all its fellows, and which, from the description in his road-book, and also from the remarks let fall at the tavern the night before, he recognized as the formidable "Divide."

The road which he was following led directly up the slope of this hill and over its top, and his rustic companions of the night before had indulged in considerable banter concerning this climb, freely promising Blair that he would never be able to reach the summit without dismounting from his wheel.

In a spirit of defiance, Ellis now resolved to achieve this feat, and seizing his handle-bars in a firmer grip, he bent his back to the task. Fortunately for him, the road-bed was of a clayey, resilient soil, and not cut up by ruts or fissures, so he managed to surmount the lower ascents without any great degree of trouble.

The long, straight incline of the "Divide" itself, however, was a very different matter. The sultry air seemed to hang over him like a tent; the heat was deadly, enervating.

Yet, none the less, he persisted in his attempt, his muscular legs moving up and down with the precision of piston-rods, his lips pressed tight together, his breath escaping, despite himself, in labored suspirations.

At last he came to the last rise of his journey and the steepest part of the hill. He was bending far over the fork, forcing the machine forward almost by the sheer lift of his shoulders.

Yet, for all his endeavors, slower and more slow moved his wheel, more and more did it display a tendency to wabble in his grasp. He was advancing at hardly more than a snail's pace.

The crest of the hill was but a yard or two away. Could he make it? There was a second of suspense, and then, almost by pure force of will, he pulled himself over the edge, and stepped from the machine, a conqueror.

"Well, I've done it," he panted triumphantly, as he threw himself down on the soft grass by the roadside and mopped his dripping face; "but I'll have to confess that it took all there was in me to do it. If it had been a foot farther I couldn't have made it, not even if my life depended on it."

He stretched himself out luxuriously in the shade and threw his arms above his head. His heart was pumping away like a steam-engine, and his limbs ached from the unaccustomed strain he had put upon them.

From head to foot he was as wet with perspiration as though ho had been plunged in the river.

Even up at that height, where such breeze as was stirring had full sweep, and where the shade lay thick under the big oak and maple trees, the temperature was something stifling.

Up above him, through the leaves, he could catch glimpses of the sky, and he observed that it had lost the bright blue tint of the early morning, being tinged, instead, with a sort of nondescript yellow.

The outlines of the distant hills, too, it seemed to him, had grown more blurred. In fact, three was a general indistinctness to the entire landscape.

Over in the west there were lazily piling up some heavy banks of cumuli, threateningly shaded on their under sides with a purplish black.

"I shouldn't wonder if that old landlord were right and we did have some dirty weather before evening," commented Ellis uneasily; "still, I am not going to hurry myself on that account. Now that I have made this corking old climb, I should be a fool not to take full advantage of this glorious view. Besides, it probably won't rain for several hours yet, anyway."

He reckoned without a knowledge of the almost tropical swiftness with which a summer storm gathers in these latitudes.

The view from the summit was indeed a magnificent one. Rising to his feet, Blair made the circumference of the little plateau, and gazed for miles away in c-very direction.

To the north lay the level plains through which he had come on his journey; east and west ran the chain of hills which bisects the entire State at this point; and to the south was the valley of the Yoctangee, with its swollen river and flooded streams, the back water standing in lakes and pools over what had a few days before been fertile farm land and pasturage.

Some ten miles away as the crow flies he could make out the spires and chimneys of the little city for which he was bound, and from it he could follow northward a serpentine line, the single-track road-bed of the D.N. and Q.

Going to the southern brow of the hill, he marked with his eye the course of the turnpike, a ribbon of pale saffron through the green of the corn-fields, and the mirror-like sheets of water. He could see that it was well up above the floods for its entire length, and that he would consequently have no difficulty in reaching the town.

Indeed, the only point which offered any obstacle 'to his advance was the washed-out bridge of which he had been told, and that was just below him, about half-way down the "Divide." The road pitched down toward it in a single steep slope, and then rose slightly to the crossing.

He observed curiously that the stream which had wrought such havoc was not very large—not more than twenty-five feet in width at that point; but, as he quickly perceived, it took its rise in the hills directly above, and, consequently, in times of heavy rainfall would be rapidly transformed into a veritable mountain torrent.

On the present occasion it had swept out the bridge clean and clear, leaving the approaches on either side practically intact.

Above this gap the pike forked off into the loop which he had been directed to follow, and he interestedly searched with his eye its curving course to find its junction with the main road again, and thus locate the house which had been occupied by his namesake—the house, perhaps, in which he himself had been born.

In order to assist his vision, he got his field-glasses out of the traveling-case strapped on his bicycle and focused them on the prospect before him. Through them he could readily make out the old stone dwelling, set well back from the road and embowered in a grove of walnut-trees.

There was about it an air of sturdy individuality—a sort of uncompromising independence—which pleased Ellis immensely.

"It is just the sort of place that one would imagine for the home of Evelyn Blair," he commented reflectively.

He was just about to complete the survey and put away his glasses, when the peculiar actions of a group of men along the railroad track caught his attention.

They were in a little hollow down in the valley where the line of the D. N. and Q. curved in close to the main pike, and a good four miles away from him, but the binoculars brought them so well within the field of his vision that he could discern their every movement as well as if they had been distant not a hundred feet.

He had noted them once or twice before during the progress of his inspection, but, deeming them merely section hands at their nooning, or a party of hoboes loafing their idle hours away, had paid little heed to their proceeding.

They had been seated under a tree near the railroad track, engaged in a game of cards. Now, however, they abruptly ceased their game, and rising to their feet, began tying black masks across one another's faces.

At the' same time, they busied themselves in inspecting carefully the workings of the revolvers and Winchesters with which the watcher on the hilltop could now see that they were armed.

What could it mean? When they had first risen to their feet Blair had supposed that they were simply apprehensive on account of the rising storm, which was now plainly rolling up from the southwest; but the masks and the firearms speedily disabused his mind on that score.

A moment before, the threatening black clouds had caused him to think of seeking shelter for himself; but he forgot all about that in his astonishment at this new development.

Leveling his glasses upon the men down in the valley, he gazed wonderingly, while they, their preparations completed, filed down to the track, and with a couple of skids began to loosen a rail from the ties.

Then there flashed upon his mind the recollection of a remark he had heard dropped at the tavern the night before: "Clarence down at the station says that the D.N. and Q. is goin' to try an' git a train through to-morrer mornin'."

As if to give confirmation to his thought, there broke upon his ear at that moment a sound, faint and far away, but unmistakable in its character. It was the shrill whistle of an approaching train.

The sky above had by this time become overcast with a dull, leaden gray, and a great black cloud, fringed along its edges with forked lightnings, was sweeping rapidly up from the west. The air had grown absolutely motionless with the calm that precedes a storm.

Through that intense, unnatural stillness there was borne to him plainly the distant rumble of car-wheels on an iron track.

Swiftly he faced about and pointed his glasses in the direction from which the sound came. Away off to the north, but sweeping rapidly down toward Yoctangee, he could make out the smoke of a locomotive and the serpent-like progress of the train.

It was the D.N. and Q. passenger—the first train to be sent out over the line since the destruction of the bridge—and, judging from its rate of speed, it must pass below him inside of the next ten minutes.

He turned again to the black-masked men. They had finished their work of tearing up the track, and were now ranged on either bank waiting for the fruition of their devilish plan.

Their purpose was only too evident to Blair. They intended to wreck and rob the approaching cars, reasoning, no doubt, that in the present flooded condition of the country they could escape without much danger of pursuit.

That they meant business there could be no question. The care and promptitude they had displayed in all their preparations showed that their scheme had been well considered and that they proposed to carry their grim undertaking through to success.

In appalled dismay, Blair nervously clenched and unclenched his hands and gnawed at his mustache.

Was there no way in which he could warn the unsuspecting train of its impending peril? His voice, of course, could never carry to the engineer. But a signal of some kind?

Yet, even as the suggestion came to him he realized the utter futility of it. How much time had he to rig up a signal, or, even if he had, what assurance had he that the trainmen would heed it, displayed at that height, or, indeed, ever notice it at all?

No; a signal, to accomplish anything, would have to be fluttered right beside the track. The road lay straight before him. In three minutes he could coast down that steep slope upon his wheel and be beside the track.

But, alas! between him and the bottom of the hill yawned the open chasm left by the washing out of the Dry Run bridge.

No; there was nothing that he could do. All that was left for him was to sit up here and watch the inevitable catastrophe.

And then, with a pang of acute consternation,, a new thought shot into his mind. In all probability Evelyn Blair was a passenger upon that doomed train!

For just one second his heart stood still in an awfulness of horror. The next, he sprang impulsively forward and vaulted into the saddle of his bicycle!

V. — BY THE AIR ROUTE.

IN that moment of agonized helplessness there had suddenly come to Ellis Blair, like an inspiration, the memory of a feat he had seen performed in the circus only a few weeks before, in New York.

Down a steep incline, extending from the very top of the Madison Square Garden, had sped a man astride a flying wheel. Almost before one had time to think, he reached the bottom, then dashed up a little slant, and, with the impetus acquired sailed out into the air like a bird, leaping an open chasm forty feet in width, to alight safe upon the other side.

It was a thrilling and hazardous performance, one which uniformly held a vast audience spellbound in breaths-catching suspense; but the very fact that it had been done, and done, too, not by a professional gymnast, but by a young daredevil of an amateur, proved to Ellis that any man with sufficient nerve to attempt it and enough gumption to control his bicycle -en route could achieve the same result?

Here, on the southern slope of the "Divide," as Blair's eye had already remarked, the natural conditions were almost perfect for the test. There was, first, the long, straight slant from the summit, then the little upward rise, and finally the yawning gap, where the bridge across Dry Run had been lifted from its moorings by the sudden rush of waters.

All these considerations take time in the telling, but as a matter of fact they flashed through the young man's mind instantaneously. Hardly had the recollection of the circus act presented itself to him before he had made his decision and was off.

If Evelyn Blair was aboard that train, her peril was imminent. A swift mental picture of a railroad wreck, with all its attendant horrors, whirled before the man's eyes. He could not afford to hesitate.

Just long enough to straighten out his wheel and take his firmest grip upon the handle-bars he stopped; a second later he was flying down the hillside.

Swiftly and more swiftly revolved the wheels. In fact, the speed was so great that the rider did. not "have time to think. All his impressions were jumbled into-a confused whirl, except for the one paramount idea that, whatever else occurred, he must not let that front wheel of his swerve by even so much as a hairbreadth.

Ellis had tobogganed, he had coasted, he had shot the chutes; but never had he dreamed of such velocity of motion as that which he now attained. The way he went down that hill was like nothing so much as the swoop of a swallow.

Before he had traversed a dozen rods his cap was blown from his head, his hair streamed out behind him, the flying particles of dust in the air stung his skin like needles. The wheel seemed to be no longer turning or the tires touching the ground. His sensation was simply one of tearing through space.

So fast, indeed, was he moving, that when he reached th; bottom of the incline and shot up the little opposite slope to the crossing he actually did not realize that he was not still descending.

Then, for one brief glimpse, he caught the flash of water underneath him, a momentary vision of the rocky bed of a stream, and knew that he was soaring through the empty air.

The next instant he felt the jolt as his bicycle landed on the farther bank and swept on in its triumphant career.

He had done it—had made the jump successfully; but still he had no time for exultation. His speed was still something terrific, and he feared to clamp on the brake except in the most gradual fashion.

The ground here, however, was level for quite a little stretch, and little by little he managed to wear down the whirlwind impetus he had acquired and gain some control over his runaway steed.

For the first time since he had started, he ventured to raise his head and take a glance about him. Hitherto the roar of the wind in his ears had been so strong as to drown all other noises; but now, with his slackening gait, the rumble and rattle of the approaching train became plainly perceptible to him.

He threw a hasty look back over his shoulder and saw the smoke of the locomotive just rounding a curve at the foot of the western shoulder of the "Divide."

The train was not a mile away from him and he had to get across a stretch of plowed field to reach a point along the track where he could signal. The distance between the pike and the railroad, he found, was considerably greater than it had appeared to him from the hilltop.

He glanced ahead with quick apprehension. Was all his daring risk, then, to be for naught? Was he to fail in his errand, after all?

No; thank Heaven! fortune still favored him. Just ahead stood an open gate, and from it ran a lane across the field, affording access to the track for both himself and his wheel.

It was a sharp turn in, at that gate, at the pace he was going; but he made it. Through the opening he dashed, and on down the lane, pedaling with all his might, his goal now plainly in sight.

The first gust of the coming storm met him as he made the turn and faced toward the west. With a spatter of raindrops and an exulting blast of the wind, it strove to drive him back.

For a moment he was staggered by its force; but he resolutely braced himself and pushed on right in the very teeth of the gale.

He heard a cry to his left, and glancing in that direction, saw the train-wreckers running toward him. They had evidently penetrated his purpose, and were now trying to retard him from accomplishing it.

The next message from them would no doubt come in the shape of a sharp crack from a rifle.

But his other eye could see the engine, with its string of coaches, speeding on to destruction; so he only crouched lower in his saddle and pedaled away harder than ever.

Another blast from the approaching storm met him, fiercer than before. It whirled a cloud of dust up into his face, choking and blinding him for the moment. The rain beat down in a pelting flood.

The roar of the oncoming train was now so close that he could hear above it the clank-clank of the driving-wheels as they bit upon the rail, and also, closer upon his left, he could catch the cries of the train-wreckers hastening to thwart him.

Only one hundred feet farther, now. He reached up with one hand and tore loose a red bandanna handkerchief which he wore about his neck, and which he intended to use as a signal-flag.

The fluttering kerchief in his hand, he hurled himself from his wheel, and with a shout of triumph leaped up the embankment.

And then the world suddenly resolved itself into a chaos of swirling flame; his ears were deafened by a crashing detonation, as though Heaven itself had collapsed. He staggered backward, threw his arms up before his face, and— knew no more!

VI. — A PRISONER OF FATE.

WHEN Blair recovered consciousness he found himself in a darkened room, and he realized in a vague, uncertain way that somebody was sitting beside him plying a fan.

Through a certain intangible but none the less definite perception he decided that this person was a woman.

It never occurred to him to make sure upon this point, for he felt a strange disinclination to move in the slightest degree. It was so much easier to lie still and to take no trouble of any kind—not even the trouble to think.

Nevertheless, his thoughts, working slowly and disconnectedly though they did, finally forced home upon him the conclusion that he must have been ill, and he meditated perplexedly upon this astounding fact for quite a little time.

In fact, it seemed rather humorous to him than otherwise; he had never been ill a day in his life, and had boasted so often of his unfailing good health that this was in a way somewhat of a joke upon him.

Why he had been sick or how long, or where he now was, he never stopped to consider. He was absolutely devoid of curiosity.

Gradually his sluggish faculties becoming more aroused he opened his eyes languidly, and saw stretched above him the canopy of an old-fashioned four-poster bed. This at last set him to speculating mildly upon his surroundings.

He did not recognize that bed as a part of the furniture in his own room. Where, then, was he, and how had he come there?

He cudgeled his brain in a confused fashion over these questions for several moments, but utterly failed to reach any satisfactory conclusion, until at last, with the slow awakening of memory, he recalled that mad dash of his down the "Divide," with its sensational leap across the gaping channel of Dry Run —that anxious race of his against time to warn the imperiled train.

Ah! how the picture came back to him now! , That plowed field, with its narrow lane running from the pike to the railroad track; the engine and train speeding toward him on the right, the masked desperadoes on his left hastening forward to the attack, himself bent low upon his wheel, flogging his tired sinews to still greater exertion.

The weird gloom of the approaching storm lay over all the landscape; above was the ebon sky, with its dark masses of whirling clouds; ahead came an advancing gray wall of pelting rain, cutting off the distant hills as with a veil.

And then had blazed put that sudden fierce glare of crackling, rose-colored flame; there had sounded that tremendous, crashing roar, when, as it seemed to him, the whole universe had jumbled together in one monster cataclysm.

Ha! He was beginning now to reason from cause to effect. His recollections failed abruptly at that point. Consequently, from that moment to this he must have been insensible—dead to all that went on around him.

And the cause? The cause was beyond question that thunderous outbreak of fire and fury which had met him as he ran forward to signal the train.

Yet, what could it have been? A terrific explosion, of some kind? Or, possibly, the effect of a bullet crashing into his brain from the revolver of one of the robbers?

He suddenly bethought him of the breaking storm. Ah! that was more like it! A stroke of lightning.

He wondered dully if he had been injured permanently in any way by the shock; but as he felt no pain in any part of his body, only an overwhelming inclination to lie still and not exert himself, he readily concluded that fears on this score were groundless.

A more engrossing speculation with him was as to the fate of the train which he had striven so hard to save. Had it, like himself, been stopped by the thunderbolt, or had it dashed heedlessly on to destruction?

Reflection, however, also reassured him on this point. He himself had evidently been picked up and cared for by some one. It was unlikely that the train-wreckers would have delayed their flight to play the good Samaritan to one who had done his best to thwart them.

And since there was no one else about, it was but reasonable to suppose that succor had come to him from those aboard the rescued train. Yes; that was undoubtedly the case. The train people, in return for what he had done, had carried him here, and had seen to it that he received every attention.

Comforted by these conclusions, and tired out, moreover, by the amount of thinking he had done, he ceased further cogitation for the present and dozed off quietly to sleep.

A few minutes later a man entered the room with the silent step of a physician and questioned the woman sitting at Blair's bedside.

She was' a rather elderly lady, with gray hair arranged in soft puffs above her smooth forehead, and with a gentle, kindly face.

"Just about the same," she answered. "He lies there absolutely inert, his breathing the only indication that he is alive. There has not been the slightest change at any time since he was first brought in."

"Nor will there be," returned the other. He spoke with the definite assurance of a young practitioner. "He will simply last as long as that powerful vitality of his can hold him up. Then he will go out like a snuffed candle. The incredible thing about it is that he should have lived as long as he has. Three full days now, is it not?"

"Have you been able to find any of his friends or relatives yet, so that they can be notified?"

"No. The only clue to his identity, as you know, is that signature of his upon the register of the tavern at Bainville. I telegraphed yesterday to the authorities of New York, and also to the newspapers, but they seem unable to locate any one named B. Ellis who might be in this part of the country."

The doctor leaned across the bed to make a perfunctory examination of his patient's condition. He manifestly deemed it little worth his while to waste any especial effort upon one who was practically already beyond the reach of his skill.

"A total and complete paralysis," he muttered to himself, gazing down upon the silent, immobile features. "Every organ in his body is affected. How on earth such an absolute corpse can still maintain even the semblance of life passes my comprehension."

Just at that moment Blair chanced to awake from his nap, and languidly opened his eyes.

"Good Heavens!" he ejaculated. "The fellow's eyes are open. Get me a light, quick—a candle," waving his hand in a gesture of brusk command toward the woman.

She hastened off to do his bidding. The physician bent down and scanned with interested professional intentness the face of his patient.

But if his surprise was great at the development he had encountered, it was no greater, although from a different cause, than that which suddenly struck the mind of the man he was examining. Blair could see the doctor's lips moving in speech; but, to his astonishment, not a word that was uttered could he hear."

He realized now that an intense stillness had surrounded him ever since he had wakened from his condition of coma. In the quiet prevailing in his chamber he should at least have caught the swish of the woman's fan as she moved it to and fro, or perhaps the buzzing of a fly against the window-pane. Was it, then, that the crashing peal of thunder had stricken him stone-deaf?

At the supposition, he instinctively started to rise in bed, but his limbs refused to lift him. He tried again, struggled, strove with might and main. Not a muscle moved in obedience to his will.

Was he, then, in addition to being deaf, powerless, shorn of his strength? He endeavored to speak—to demand of the doctor above him what was the reason of this awful lethargy. His voice refused to respond to his bidding; not a sound could he emit.

He felt just as a person does in one of those horrible nightmares when, to all seeming perfectly wide awake, one is unable to stir hand or foot, but lies perfectly impotent, chained with fetters of steel.

He made one more desperate effort to burst the intangible bonds which held him. It was of no use. He could no more move himself than he could fly. He could only lie there, a powerless human log, deprived of all his faculties.

As the real state of his appalling situation broke upon his mind his soul recoiled from the prospect with shuddering horror. Was this all, then, that the future offered him—to drag out the weary years in a state of living death? Better that his life had been extinguished once and for all with the falling of the stroke.

So intense was the awful, shuddering mental anguish which overwhelmed him that he almost swooned.

Then his cool reason came to his aid, and with her assurance hope rose once more to give him courage.

Since he had regained one sense, he asked himself, was it not fair to suppose that in time all of them would come back? Indeed, with his health and constitution, might he not hope eventually to recover all of his faculties?

The shock he had withstood had evidently been a tremendous one; but since he had already progressed so favorably, what need was there to give way to despair?

Yet, for all his optimism, he eagerly searched the face of the physician above him in an endeavor to read there the answer to the anxious questions which were surging in his brain.

The lady had by this time returned with the candle, and the doctor, taking it in his hand, passed it rapidly once or twice in front of Blair's eyes.

"Yes; he can see," he exclaimed, turning to the woman with quick confirmation. "More than that, I believe that the fellow is absolutely conscious."

Bending again over the patient, he said to him slowly and distinctly: "Can you understand what I am saying to you?"'

There was no answer. Indeed, there could be none. Blair, although he could neither hear nor talk, saw that the other's lips were moving, and grasped the purpose of his action. He tried, oh, so determinedly, to give some answering sign, even if it were only a motion of the head; but his attempt was futile.

The physician, disappointed at the result of his test, was about to turn away, but he caught the plea of that supplicating glance and hesitated. A glimmer of the truth came to him.

With a sudden inspiration, he drew a pencil from his pocket and wrote large across the face of a prescription-blank: "Can you read this message? If so, close your eyes twice and then open them again."

Almost immediately his instructions were complied with. Blair quickly lowered his eyelids twice. Then he reopened them with a flash of triumph in his glance.

"What is it?" asked the old lady, nervously laying her hand upon his arm. "Is he worse?"

"Worse? No, indeed. I am going to cure him, now that I have found a medium of communication!"

VII. — A STARTLING DISCOVERY.

THE young physician was no longer perfunctory or careless in his manner toward his patient. Here was a case which might well arouse all his interest, all his ambition, and he threw himself into it heart and soul.

Over Blair's anatomy he prodded and punched and nudged. He tested in the most elaborate fashion all the man's deadened senses, to see if he could not detect somewhere a faint, lingering spark of sentient feeling.

And even when he failed, even when not a single response rewarded all his efforts, he determined only the more firmly that he would still conquer— would yet restore the spirit of life and vigor to this inanimate flesh.

In Blair's enfeebled condition, the thorough examination naturally wore him out, and when it was completed he was glad enough to accede to the doctor's orders that he should go at once to sleep without undergoing any further excitement.

"Don't let yourself get bothered about anything for the present," wrote this new friend in his final message. "To-morrow we will answer all the questions you may desire to ask; but for the present you will just have to let things slide. And above all, don't go to worrying about your condition. I am going to pull you through, all right." Ellis looked his gratitude for this consoling message, batted his eyes twice in token of his acquiescence to its mandates, and then dropped off into a prolonged and restful slumber.

During the night he was aroused once by the sweet-faced old lady in order to take his medicine; but, resolutely obedient to the doctor's instructions, he immediately closed his eyes again, and soon was once more locked fast in a quiet, dreamless sleep.

When he at length returned to a consciousness of mundane things the broad daylight was streaming in at the windows. The morning was far advanced, and the doctor had already come to visit him.

The young man could detect no apparent change in himself from the previous day. He was still clamped fast in the viselike grip of his paralysis, unable to feel or to move, deaf, dumb, and bereft of taste and smell; but for all that, he was by no means downcast in his spirits.

The deft, assured manner of the doctor, and above all, the satisfaction which appeared on his face as the examination proceeded, gave Blair hope and courage for the future.

The same methods of communication were employed between them as on the previous afternoon, the physician making his inquiries as to the other's feelings and symptoms by means of written questions; and Ellis looked forward, when this business of testing his physical condition should have been completed, to a little chat in which he hoped to gain some information on various matters which were puzzling him.

The doctor's concluding message was that he had undergone sufficient agitation for the time being and that he would have to wait for other topics until that afternoon, in the meantime endeavoring to keep himself as composed as possible.

"You are getting along splendidly," the writing ended, "and you must help along your recovery as much as possible by being docile and obedient to my orders. I shall be very busy myself to-day, but Mrs. Collier is preparing a sort of letter which will tell you everything you want to know, and which will be shown to you when she has finished it."

Along about three o'clock in the afternoon, then, the old lady came to his bedside with the promised manuscript, and held it up, sheet by sheet, to him for inspection.

"To-day is the ninth day of August," began the narrative. "You were brought here on the afternoon of the fifth, suffering from the effects of a terrific stroke of lightning. We summoned Dr. Morris at once, and after an examination he pronounced you fatally injured, claiming that it was impossible for you ever to arouse from the unconscious condition in which you lay. He said that you were affected with a total paralysis.

"Nevertheless, under his instructions, we never ceased for a moment our efforts to revive you, with the results which you know. Dr. Morris now believes that with rest and proper care there is no reason why you should not in time regain all your functions and, despite the terrible shock you have endured, be eventually restored to as good health as you enjoyed originally.

"I have dealt at length with these matters in order to allay your natural apprehensions, and also because I knew your physical state would be the subject of most vital interest to you at the present time.

"To continue," went on the writing, "we learned your name, and wired to the authorities at your home in an endeavor to communicate with your friends or relatives, but, so far, have received no reply.

"If there is any person you would like to have notified, please signify the fact to me by closing your eyes twice, and we will try to devise some method of finding out who it is."

She held the paper aside for a moment, in order to search his face for the sign; but he held his eyelids resolutely open. There was really no one just now whom he cared to have informed of his predicament.

He was supposed to be away on his vacation, so. his absence from his desk would cause no comment. But if it should become generally known how ill he was, especially with a disease affecting the brain, he was well aware that the results upon the concerns under his charge might be very disastrous.

The old lady, understanding nothing of this, merely recognized that this piece of flotsam cast upon her shores was apparently without human ties. She sighed commiseratingly, and allowed him to resume his reading.

Blair noticed with some surprise that there was only a page more of it, and he wondered at this, for he knew that in that space she could not well touch upon the fate of the railroad train he had tried to warn, nor be able to tell him what had befallen the train-wreckers.

She might naturally have supposed that he would be interested in these things, he said to himself. Why, then, was she so strangely silent about them? He longed to question her—to ask for some further particulars.

Still, he reflected, the matter had probably turned out all right. Had it been otherwise, and- had the train plunged ahead into a catastrophe, she would almost certainly have made some mention of it. It would have been a matter of too great and too recent interest in this little community to be ignored.

So he turned his eyes once more to the sheet of paper she held up before him and read: "You are now my guest, and I trust you will feel yourself welcome here as long as you may remain. My name is Mrs. Mary Collier, and I am a widow without many interests in life, so your coming has been a godsend to us, in a way. This house is called the old Ellis Blair place, and is situated only a short distance from the foot of the 'Divide,' and about eight miles away from Yoctangee."

The communication ended here, and when she thought he had had sufficient time to read the concluding page she started to lay it away with the others; but she observed such a perplexed, questioning light in his eyes that, thinking he had not thoroughly mastered it, she held it up to him once more.

He was evidently deeply interested, staring fixedly at the written words with his brow puckered into a thoughtful frown.

She still held the sheet up to his inspection, but he turned his gaze away from the paper and looked into her face with a wistful, insistent inquiry. There was manifestly something he wished to say to her, some message that he would give worlds to have the power of expressing; but what it was she found herself unable to determine.

She read the last sheet of her letter over again in an attempt to try to fathom his wishes, but it told her nothing.

"I cannot tell what he is driving at," she muttered, "unless it is that he is trying to thank me for the little I have been able to do for him."

But she was mistaken. It was not gratitude that Blair was so strenuously trying to convey to her, but a question directly concerning himself.

For the hand which had penned the final word, "Yoctangee," upon her manuscript was the same which had written it on that letter which he had found wedged in behind the drawer of Horace McCutcheon's old-fashioned bureau, and which had sent him flying off on this wild-goose chase of his to the West.

VIII. — A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE.

IT was the thirteenth day of August, and along about eleven o'clock in the morning the telephone in the office of the Great Atlantic Importing and Exporting Company rang a noisy summons, and inquiry was made for Mr. Blair.

"Well, then, somebody else who is in authority," said the impatient, insistent voice at the other end of the wire; and the boy, consequently, made connection with the desk of Mr. Fearing, the chief clerk.

Now, Fearing was an old fixture, who had remained over from the McCutcheon régime: and although he was careful, accurate, and faithful to the last degree in the performance of his duties, he was not just the person to handle a difficult situation with tact and diplomacy.

And, alas! the present situation was one requiring a diplomat; for at the other end of that 'phone was Percy Hastings, one of the shrewdest and keenest newspaper reporters in New York, and he was now bent on tracing down a story of which he had caught a hint from the gossiping remarks of one of the clerks in Blair's concern.

He now asked suavely for Mr. Blair, representing himself as a person who had some important business to transact with the head of the house.

Fearing responded in worried fashion that Mr. Blair was absent on his vacation and asked if some one else in the establishment would not do as well.

The reporter, still enacting the hurried man of affairs, replied tersely that some one else would not do and seemed indignant that Blair had not returned at the end of ten days, averring that such had been a promise made by the secretary to himself.

He seemed, moreover, considerably puzzled at this dereliction, remarking, en passant, that Blair had always been scrupulously exact in keeping his appointments.

The matter between them was so extremely important, however, that it must certainly have slipped Blair's memory, else he himself would undoubtedly have heard from him. Perhaps Mr. Fearing could give him an address where a message might be sent to Mr. Blair?

No? Well, then, the name of the last place from which they had received news of their chief? The message could no doubt be forwarded.

He was so persistent, and withal so wily in his methods of attack, that poor old Fearing was completely taken in, and finally confessed that the present whereabouts of Blair was a complete enigma to all his associates, and that they were in the greatest kind of a stew over his unexplained absence.

This was all that Percy Hastings wanted. He thanked Fearing politely, expressed his concern over the strange situation, hoped that everything would turn out all right in the end, and rang off the telephone.

A few moments later, but now in propria persona, he sauntered into the office of the Great Atlantic Company.

Fortified with the intelligence he had already extracted from Fearing, he made short work of the futile attempt at secrecy and reserve which the clerks endeavored to maintain. He turned them inside out with a searching inquisition, and forced them to tell him everything they knew.

He learned, accordingly, that Mr. Blair had left New York the first of the month, in accordance with his annual custom, for a bicycle trip up through New England; that nothing had been heard from him since he started, but that no especial uneasiness had been occasioned until the end of the tenth day, when, in direct opposition to the fixed routine, of his habits, he had failed either to return or to send word when he might be expected; that this uneasiness had now developed into anxiety and alarm; that urgent inquiry at points along his intended route had failed to elicit the slightest information concerning him; that it was now practically certain that he had not followed at all the course he had laid out, but had gone in some other direction; and, finally, that in view of the man's well-known customs the whole affair was so inexplicable and mystifying that all who knew him were completely at sea.

Here was a first-page story with a vengeance, and Percy Hastings did not fail to take advantage of it. In the next edition of the yellow sheet for which he labored the tale was set forth with sensational embellishments and cunningly worded speculations calculated to rouse the interest of the reader, and to forever damn the business reputation of its unfortunate subject.

Thus launched, the Ellis Blair disappearance speedily became a cause célèbre. It happened to be a dull season, and the other newspapers followed suit, hopping upon the case with the avidity of a hungry sparrow after a worm.

Politics were dead, sporting events in a rather languishing state, and public interest was yearning for something on which to whet its teeth. Consequently, the great mass of newspaper readers, with their love of anything savoring of mystery, seized upon the topic, and followed with eager concern the developments recorded by the journalists from day to day.

Ellis Blair and his possible whereabouts was a subject for ardent discussion among thousands of people who had never heard his name before. It was disputed over in clubs, cafes, and restaurants; in offices and boudoirs, and by merchants and newsboys with equal and unabated zest.

There were other results, too, and of a different nature. Ellis had business rivals who had watched his phenomenal rise with jealous scrutiny. These sought to give a sinister cast to his strange absence, and set afloat sly rumors and innuendoes, which were presently reflected in the tone of the newspaper comments.

All of these things had a marked effect, and by them the prestige of the Great Atlantic Company was becoming rapidly impaired. Its stockholders were panic-stricken, its directors in despair.

Blair had so persistently kept all the manifold interests of the concern to himself, the whole enterprise was so dominated by his personality, that his sudden withdrawal was like the removal of the corner-stone from a lofty tower. The whole structure was so weakened and debilitated that the slightest adverse wind might send it crashing down in collapse. No one was in a position to take firm hold, or to give the lie to the rumors so industriously circulated. The slow days dragged on, and the stories affecting the company's stability became steadily more open and virulent. Never was seen a case where an apparently sound and solvent concern so rapidly disintegrated by reason of the defection of its master-spirit.

By the 1st of September the harassed directorate agreed that drastic measures would have to be resorted to, and therefore decided to hold a meeting on the 15th of the month to decide whether it would not be wise to close up the institution and wind up its affairs.

The delay of fifteen days was necessary in order that an expert examination might be made of Blair's books; for by this time there were few who did not believe that the secretary had skipped out and had taken along with him a large quantity of the company's funds.

True, his well-known exemplary habits all tended to disprove any such hypothesis; but his enemies had been busy, and the public is always prone to give credence to the worst that can be said of any one.

Moreover, as it had unfortunately happened, Ellis had a short time before his departure sent a considerable sum of money to a financial agency in one of the Central American republics with which the United States has no extradition treaty, and for purposes of convenience had had the remittance made payable to his personal order.

This fact was uncovered by the experts only a few days after they began their task, and being unexplained, was naturally taken as complete confirmation of rascality on his part.

But the strangest feature of the whole affair was that amid all this hubbub and investigation, this winnowing out of all sorts of suggestions and theories, this following up of hundreds of baseless clues, no one for a moment thought of connecting his absence with the numerous inquiries which had been sent on from Yoctangee seeking information concerning the friends and relatives of one B. Ellis, who had been struck by lightning.

IX. — THE MAN IN THE PICTURE.

EVELYN BLAIR had not been on the train which Ellis had so nearly lost his life in trying to save. As a matter of fact, she was spared the necessity of going down to Yoctangee by accidentally encountering on the streets "of Columbus the very man she had traveled West to interview.

They, like herself, were held at the capital by stress of the floods, and as she had a thorough familiarity with the location of the site under discussion, their mutual business was satisfactorily transacted.

Thus it happened that, instead of taking the D.N. and Q. on the morning after she left Blair, she retraced her footsteps to New York.

It is not to be denied, despite the fact that the exigencies of business made it no longer imperative for her to visit Yoctangee, that it was only by the exercise of a firm will that she restrained herself from doing so; and this not by reason of any overweening desire to see her old friends as she endeavored to persuade herself, but rather to meet once more a very recent acquaintance, for—let it be whispered gently—Evelyn was really as favorably impressed with Ellis as he was with her.

Still, a woman likes to. be sought; and although Miss Blair was above many of the foibles of her sex, she was just feminine enough to tell herself that if her comrade of the journey wished to see anything more of her he would have to take the trouble to look her up in New York. She certainly—with a toss of her pretty head—did not intend to chase all around the country after him.

He had told her that he was on a vacation trip of ten days, so she did not expect him for some little time after her return; but when the fortnight had elapsed it.was noticeable that her daily appearances at the office were marked by especial care and pains with her toilet. Her hair was always smooth and unruffled, her ribbons of the daintiest and freshest.

Her associates also observed, during this period, an unwonted spirit of abstraction on her part. She was not thoroughly and completely taken up with business, as before, but often fell into fits of pensive musing at her desk, and would start and flush whenever an unaccustomed step sounded at the door.

Still, as the days wore on and there came no word and no visit from Ellis, the unacknowledged hope which she had been cherishing grew fainter and fainter.

It had only been a passing flirtation with him, she told herself angrily; an acquaintanceship to be forgotten as quickly as it was made. Well, why should she think any more about it? If he chose to act in such cavalier fashion, she could survive, no doubt. Probably she was well rid of him.

Nevertheless, she grew strangely peevish and petulant, finding fault where none .existed, and then trying to make up for her bad temper by injudicious leniency. She was variable, capricious, »moody; and she ascribed it to the hot weather.

One evening in September she received a call from Percy Hastings, the reporter. She had known him ever since she had been in New York, and although she did not particularly care for him, yet, since they were in the same set, she was on a friendly footing with him.

For a time they sat and chatted; but finally, as conversation languished, Hastings proposed that they go to a vaudeville show. Restless, out of sorts with herself, craving diversion, the girl readily consented, and accordingly they set out.

Percy was full of the great "beat" he had scored in the Blair disappearance case and its more recent developments. All the way to the theater he would talk of nothing else, and although Evelyn felt little interest in the matter, and for. the most part paid little heed to his observations upon it, she could not fail to catch an occasional remark.

"Well, in four days more the whole thing will come to a head," he finally said. "Then the directors of the company will meet to hear the report of the experts, and I suppose will wind the concern up. The next thing, of course, will be a warrant for Blair, and an effort to get him to disgorge his plunder."

"I don't see why you should say that," retorted Evelyn warmly, miffed by the cock-sureness of Hastings's manner. "All you newspaper men speak of this Mr. Blair as though he were already a convicted criminal. Why don't you wait until the examination of his books is completed?"

"Oh, I guess there's no doubt of his crookedness," returned Hastings airily. "Men don't disappear that way unless they have a very good reason for it. But what has made you such a vehement champion of his?" he added. "Simply because he is your namesake?"

Now, Evelyn, as stated, really cared not a whit one way or the other about the case, but Hastings's attitude gave her an opportunity to vent her spleen at the world in general, and she took advantage of it. They argued the matter with heat all the rest of the way down-town, and only allowed their discussion to subside when they had finally taken their seats in the playhouse.

The performance was one of the familiar vaudeville type—little dramatic skits sandwiched in between jugglers, gymnasts, singers, and monologists. It did not especially amuse Evelyn, and when it had progressed to the final number—the moving pictures—she signified to her escort that she was ready to leave.

"Oh, let us wait a few minutes longer," urged Hastings. "They are going to put on something new, to-night, which they claim is well worth seeing.

"It seems that a train-wrecking scene had been arranged out West somewhere. Some bold bandits, hired at one-fifty a day, were to ditch a bone-yard engine and some dilapidated cars upon a piece of track temporarily abandoned by the floods. Just as everything was in readiness, however, a bicyclist on the summit of a near-by hill observed the dastardly preparations, and imagining it all to be in dead earnest, dashed to the rescue.

"The vitascope man happened to see him just as he cast off, and realizing that his act would be worth more than the other, turned his instrument in that direction.

"The fellow came down the hill like a streak of light, jumped a bridgeless stream, and would no doubt have tackled the pseudo-desperadoes, but a stroke of lightning cut short his adventure. He is now—"

But the further remarks of the reporter were cut short by the sudden darkening of the house and the flashing out of the pictures.

A number of the usual sort of representations were first thrown upon the screen—cattle drinking at a pool of water, a troop of cavalry, comic scenes, weird transformations—and then was announced: "The Ride to Save the Train."

The light wavered for a moment, steadied itself, and to Evelyn's astonishment she was looking upon the familiar scenes of her childhood—the flooded valley of the Yoctangee, with the "Divide" standing out grim and massive in the background.

Then, with a quick flash of the picture, she saw the top of that eminence, and there was—she gave a gasp of amazement—there was none other than the man she had traveled with to Columbus.

All her faculties seemed concentrated now in the one sense of. sight. Oblivious to all about her, she leaned forward in her seat, her gloved hands nervously clasping and unclasping, her breath coming short and fast.

She saw him standing there, gazing fixedly down into the valley; saw his momentary hesitation and perplexity, the swift decision that he made; saw him mount his wheel, push off; saw that thrilling whirlwind charge of his down the valley and across the stream.

The whole scene was pictured for her in the swift-moving panorama upon the screen—the turn at the gate, the hurried dash across the fields, the confused flash and glare when the lightning struck, then the hero lying prostrate and unconscious on the ground beside his bent and twisted bicycle.

The vision ended and the lights flared up all over the house. The show was over.

"What was the name of the man who did that?" demanded Evelyn breathlessly of her companion.

"Ellis," he responded. "B. Ellis, of New York. We had an inquiry about him at the time it happened, but we were never able to locate him here."

"Out where it happened, I suppose, unless he is dead by this time. Our reports in August were that he was totally paralyzed by the shock. Great picture, though, isn't it?"

She assented absently. She was wondering how soon she could catch a train to Yoctangee; for her woman's heart told her the whole story, and she realized that it was to save her rather than the train that the man had taken that mad ride down the hillside.

X. — WHAT BLAIR TOLD THE DIRECTORS.

THOSE long August and September days had been irksome indeed to Ellis Blair. True, he suffered no pain; but the inactivity was even harder to bear than pain to a man of his strenuous and stirring temperament.

Prone he lay through them upon his couch, unable to move, to hear, or speak; incapable, indeed, of making known his slightest wish except by way of an affirmative or negative movement of the eyelids in answer to a written question.

The doctor had considered for a time the formulating of a sort of Morse alphabet which would permit his patient to communicate with those about him by opening and closing his eyes; but he realized that what the sick man needed more than anything else was rest and repose, and he feared that the strain of this eyelid telegraphy would prove too taxing.

How was the doctor to know of those perplexing, eager questions which were seething in that silent brain, of the fierce unrest and anxiety which beset this strong man of affairs?

Ellis realized, on his own side, that his recovery would be only retarded by worry and bother, and for the most part he held a firm grip upon himself, refusing to allow his mind to dwell upon the problems which confronted him on every side. But he was not utterly an automaton; there were times when he could not help but ponder, and then he would almost go mad.

What had become of his business? What were they saying of him in New York? And then his thoughts would drift in another direction.

What had become of Evelyn Blair? What did she think when he failed to meet her in Yoctangee, as he promised? Did she know of his plight? Had she been on that train?

He afterward felt that he must have died during that period when all his senses were enchained and he had no outlet for his feelings had it not been for the encouragement given him by the doctor and the tender, sympathetic care of Mrs. Collier.

When his troubles multiplied about him and his fate seemed too grievous to be borne, when despair clutched at his heart and all the future seemed dark, her soft hand upon his brow soothed and comforted him.

He clung to her as a drowning man might to a plank, and she, in return, gave him unremitting care and attention.

Gradually, though very slowly, he began to improve. He gained some slight control over his limbs; his muscles no longer were entirely free from his volition.

But he was still deaf and dumb; he was still unable to communicate to those about him the questions he so longed to ask.

Yet the recovery steadily progressed, and at last came a day when he was strong enough to be lifted from the bed and again dressed in his clothes, to be seated in an easy-chair by the open window.

Ah, how he enjoyed it! The soft, balmy September breeze swept into his nostrils. He could lift up his eyes to the distant hills, beginning to array themselves now in their gorgeous autumn livery of gold and crimson and scarlet.

He saw a carriage drive up to the front of the house, and thought, with a pang, that some visitor was coming who would claim the time of Mrs. Collier and keep her away from him.

A moment later the door of his room opened. He did not hear it, of course, but he felt the presence of some one, and he instinctively turned his head.

Then all his soul leaped for one moment into his eyes. Forgetful of the fetters which bound him, he sprang to his feet—yes, sprang to his feet, and his lips, so long silent, gave vent to the glad exclamation: "Evelyn Blair!"

The shock, the joy, the unexpectedness of seeing her, had swept away the paralysis, and as he stood there he was again the strong, alert young fellow in full possession of all his faculties.

She stood gazing at him in surprise. Her lips were smiling wistfully, but the tears were not far from her eyes.

"Ill? No," he answered, coming forward to greet her. "Your coming has healed me. Thank God, I am as well as I ever was in all my life.

"But do not call me Ellis," he added. "That was all a mistake. I want to appear before you in my true colors. My name is Ellis Blair."

Mrs. Collier had followed Evelyn into the room, and had stood gazing at Blair with an expression half of joy and half of apprehension as she saw him so thoroughly restored.

Now, at his words, she started back with a cry of amazement, and was so greatly agitated that she would have fallen had not Blair quickly stepped forward and supported her.

"Ellis Blair?" she repeated wildly. "Who are you, man, and where do you come from?"

"That is just what I want to find out myself," broke in Ellis; "and I think you can tell me, for I have a letter written to Horace McCutcheon by you over twenty years ago."

Then the whole story came out. Ellis was not, as he had feared, the brother of Evelyn, but was a second cousin, the child of another sister of McCutcheon.

The garrulous old farmer who had first put him in touch with the truth that night at the Bainville tavern had got a little mixed in his facts. The boy that McCutcheon had taken was not Ellis Blair's son, and Blair had simply acted for his sister-in-law in trying to recover him from McCutcheon's custody.

"Your name," responded the sweet-faced old lady, "is Ellis Collier, and I—" she opened her arms wider—"I am your mother!"

After the natural transports of the mother and son, thus strangely reunited, had somewhat died down, Cousin Evelyn had a word or two to say.

She sketched out rapidly for the young man the events which had been taking place in New York during his absence, the machinations that had been carried on by his enemies, and the deplorable state into which his business affairs had fallen. Ellis listened in a perturbed, worried fashion, striding up and down the room as Evelyn talked, clenching his hands and frowning during the recital of the tale.

"I am sorry to leave you so soon, mother," he said, "but you can see that it is necessary I should start for New York at once.

"We must leave for Yoctangee immediately," she replied. "We can just about make the two-thirty north-bound."

His mother, apprehensive for his health, strove to make him stay over until the following day; but he would listen to no delay, and within an hour he and Evelyn were en route to the Yoctangee station.

As they drove along through the fertile valley she glanced back at the "Divide," towering in the background.

"Your ride down that brought you a mother, did it not?" she said contemplatively.

* * * * *

ON the 15th of September, when the directorate of the Great Atlantic Importing and Exporting Company gathered for its meeting, the members were surprised to find their secretary and general manager ready to receive them, composed and smiling.

He refused to answer a single question until he had them all together and had called in the representatives of the press.

Then he said: "Gentlemen, your experts have examined my books and have found every penny accounted for; the rumors affecting my integrity have all been disproved. I am back again, ready for business."

And on the spot the directorate voted him a silver dinner service as an appropriate present.

THE END

CHARLES CAREY WADDELL
(WRITING AS CHARLES CAREY)

STRANGELY ENTANGLED

First published in The Argosy, January 1907

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2025
Version Date: 2025-03-14

Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright.

Click here for more books by this author

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. — A MAN WITHOUT KINDRED.

II. — A SCRAPED ACQUAINTANCE AND A BIG SURPRISE.

III. — SOME INFORMATION BY THE WAY.

IV. — AN APPALLING PROSPECT.

V. — BY THE AIR ROUTE.

VI. — A PRISONER OF FATE.

VII. — A STARTLING DISCOVERY.

VIII. — A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE.

IX. — THE MAN IN THE PICTURE.

X. — WHAT BLAIR TOLD THE DIRECTORS.

* * * * *

THE END

CHARLES CAREY WADDELL (WRITING AS CHARLES CAREY)

STRANGELY ENTANGLED

First published in The Argosy, January 1907 This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2025 Version Date: 2025-03-14 Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright. Click here for more books by this author

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. — A MAN WITHOUT KINDRED.

II. — A SCRAPED ACQUAINTANCE AND A BIG SURPRISE.

III. — SOME INFORMATION BY THE WAY.

IV. — AN APPALLING PROSPECT.

V. — BY THE AIR ROUTE.

VI. — A PRISONER OF FATE.

VII. — A STARTLING DISCOVERY.

VIII. — A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE.

IX. — THE MAN IN THE PICTURE.

X. — WHAT BLAIR TOLD THE DIRECTORS.

* * * * *

THE END

CHARLES CAREY WADDELL
(WRITING AS CHARLES CAREY)

First published in The Argosy, January 1907

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2025
Version Date: 2025-03-14

Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright.

Click here for more books by this author