"To meet Judge MacFarlane, Mr. Semple Falkland, and the Overland
officials. You can guess what was to be done?"

"Sure. Your railroad was to be sold out, lock, stock and barrel; or leased
to the Overland for ninety-nine years--which amounts to the same thing."

"Precisely. Well, by some unaccountable mishap the receiver's special was
switched over to the Western Division at yard limits, and the engineer
seems to think he has orders to proceed westward. At all events, that is
what he is doing. And the funny part of it is that he can't stop to find
out his blunder. The fast mail is right behind him, with the receiver's
order to smash anything that gets in its way; so you see--"

"That will do," said the night editor. "We don't print fairy stories in
the _Argus_."

"None the less, you are going to print this one to-morrow morning, just as
I'm telling it to you," Kent asserted confidently. "And when you get the
epilogue you will say that it makes my little preface wearisome by
contrast."

The light was slowly dawning in the editorial mind.

"My heaven!" he exclaimed. "Kent, you're good for twenty years, at the
very lul-least!"

"Am I? It occurs to me that the prosecuting attorney in the case will have
a hard time proving anything. Doesn't it look that way to you? At the
worst, it is only an unhappy misunderstanding of orders. And if the end