The vice-president was still a young man and he was confronting a
problem that annoyed him. He had been calling himself, and not without
reason, a fair judge of men. Yet here was a man whom he had known
intimately from boyhood, who was but just now revealing a totally
unsuspected quality.

"You say you have been dodging the collisions. How do you know you
wouldn't buck up when the real pinch comes?" he demanded.

"Because the pinch came once--and I didn't buck up. It was over a year
ago, and to this good day I can't think calmly about it. You will
understand when I say that it cost me the love of the one woman in the
world."

The vice-president did understand. Being a married lover himself, he
could measure the depth of the abyss into which Lidgerwood was looking.
His voice was as sympathetic as a woman's when he said: "Go ahead and
ease your mind; tell me about it, if you can, Howard. It's barely
possible that you are not the best judge of your own act."

There was something approaching the abandonment of the shameless in
Lidgerwood's manner when he went on.

"It was in the Montana mountains. I was going in to do a bit of expert
engineering for her father. Incidentally, I was escorting her and her
mother from the railroad terminus to the summer camp in the hills, where
they were to join a coaching party of their friends for the Yellowstone
tour. We had to drive forty miles in a stage, and there were six of
us--the two women and four men. On the way the talk turned upon
stage-robbings and hold-ups. With the chance of the real thing as remote