Dan Anderson looked at him queerly.

“By the way,” began Ellsworth, taking from his pocket an engineer’s blue-print map, “one of the first things we want to settle is the question of our depot site.  The only place we can lay out our side tracks is just at the head of the canon, and at the lower end of the valley.  Do you know anything about this house here?  It’s the first one as you go into town from the lower end of the valley.”

Dan Anderson bent over the map.  “Yes, I know it perfectly,” said he.  “That’s the adobe of our friend Tom Osby here, the man who came down with me from Heart’s Desire.  He just went up the trail with your daughter, sir.”

“The yards’ll wipe him out,” said Barkley.

“The valley is so narrow,” went on Ellsworth, “according to what our engineers say, that we’ve got to clean out the whole lower part of the town, in order to lay out the station grounds.”

Dan Anderson started.  The money in his pocket suddenly burned him.

“The trouble with your whole gang,” resumed Barkley, striking a match on a log, “has been that you’ve been trying to stop the world.  You can’t do that.”

Dan Anderson, silent, grim, listened to what he had not heard for many months, the crack of the whip of modern progress.  Yet, before his eyes he still saw passing the vision of a tall, round figure, sweet in the beauty of young womanhood, even as he was strong in the strength of his young manhood.

“I’ll help you all I can honorably, gentlemen,” said he, at length, rising; “we’ll talk it over up at the town itself.  I don’t know just what we can do in the way of recognizing existing rights, but in my opinion force isn’t the way to go about it.”

“Well, we’ll use force if need be; you can depend on that!” said Barkley, harshly.  “I’ve got to get back home before long, and it will be up to you after that.”

He and Ellsworth also arose and brushed from their clothing the clinging dust and pine needles.  The three turned towards the trail and walked slowly up to the edge of the open space in which stood the Sky Top edifice.

“Quite a house, isn’t it?” said Ellsworth, admiringly.

Dan Anderson did not look at the building.  Constance was sitting alone at the edge of the gallery.  Wishing nothing so much in the world as to go forward, Dan Anderson turned back at the edge of the grounds.

Some jangling mountain jays flitted from tree to tree about him.  They seemed to call out to him to pause, to return.  The whispering of the pines called over and over to him, “Constance!  Constance!”

Once more he turned, and retraced his steps, the trees still whispering.  At the edge of the opening he paused unseen.  He saw the girl, with one hand each on the arm of her father and of Barkley, laughing gayly and walking across the gallery.  Each had offered her an arm to assist her in arising, and her act was, in fact, the most natural one in the world.  Yet to Dan Anderson, remote, morose, solitary, his soul out of all perspective, this sight seemed the very end of all the world.