"Grand, isn't it? You might have had a better view if our car had been left in its proper place in the rear; but our friend the passenger agent took good care to secure that for his own party."

Mrs. Dunham was inclined to be charitable. "I fancy he couldn't help it. From what he tells me, his people must be very exacting."

"Have you seen him this morning?" the President inquired, with some small show of curiosity.

"Yes; out on the platform. He has been telling me some of his exasperating experiences."

The President smiled indulgently. "I suspect our young friend has fallen into a habit of magnifying his difficulties," he said. "It's very easy to do, you know, when one's business makes a fine art of exaggeration."

"Why, he doesn't impress me that way, at all," said the good lady, who knew nothing of her cousin's very excellent reasons for disliking Brockway. "He seems to be a very pleasant young man, and quite intelligent."

Mr. Vennor shrugged his shoulders. "I don't question his intelligence—though it wasn't very remarkable at the dinner-table last night. Did you happen to find out whether he is going all the way across with his party?"

"He didn't say. His people are going up to Silver Plume to-day, but he can't go with them. He has to stay in Denver with one of the exacting ones whose ticket is out of repair."

"Ha! that's a very sharp little trick," said the President; but inasmuch as he did not elucidate, the chaperon misunderstood.

"To get him into trouble with the others? I fancy that is only incidental. Mr. Brockway is going to try to get Mr. Burton—our Mr. Burton, of Salt Lake City, you know—who is on the train, to take charge of the party on the Silver Plume trip."

Mr. Vennor said, "Oh," and then the young people began to appear, and the waiter announced breakfast. During the meal the President was too deeply engrossed in the working out of a small counterplot to hear or heed much of the desultory table-talk. It was quite evident that the passenger agent had learned of the proposed stop-over in Denver, and was preparing to take advantage of it. His confidence with Mrs. Dunham was only a roundabout way of notifying Gertrude.

Mr. Vennor considered many little schemes of the frustrating sort, and finally choosing one which seemed 

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