had pleaded eloquently.  The battle for political honesty would inevitably involve his father; would, if successful, defeat and disgrace him.  As often as he thought he had closed decisively with the idealistic determination, the other side of the argument sprang up again, keen-edged and biting.  Up to the present moment he had owed his father everything—­was still owing him day by day.  Would it not be the part of a son to drop out quietly, leaving the political house-cleaning for some one who would not be obliged to pay such a costly price?

It was the idealistic decision which had been in the saddle when he dropped from the trolley car at the western portal of the railway station, and which was sending him to seek the scale-turning interview with Gantry.  But, after all, it was chance and the swift current of events which seized upon him and swept him along, smashing all the arguments and fine-spun theories.  Before he had gone ten steps in the direction of Gantry’s office, some one in the throng of debarking Overland travellers called his name.  Turning quickly, he found himself face to face with a white-haired little gentleman who had plucked impatiently at his sleeve.

“Why, bless my soul!  Of all the lucky miracles!” gasped the young man who, but an instant earlier, had been deaf and blind to all external things.  And then:  “Where is Patricia?”

“She’s here, somewhere,” snapped the little gentleman irascibly.  “I’ve lost her in this confounded mob.  Find her for me.  I’ve got my reading-glasses on, and I can’t see anything.  Why don’t they have this barn of a place lighted up?”

“Stand still right where you are,” Blount directed, and a moment later he had found Patricia guarding a pair of suit-cases which were too heavy for her to carry.

“You poor lost child!” was his burbled greeting.

“You don’t mean to tell me that this is the West to which you said you were coming?”

“I’m not lost; I’m here.  It’s father who is lost,” she laughed.  Then she answered his question; “Yes, this is the West I meant, and if you haven’t been telling the truth about it—­”

Blount had snatched up the two hand-bags and had effected a reunion of the scattered pair.  The little gentleman, standing immovable, as he had been told to do, was blinking impatiently through his reading-glasses at the surging throng.  When Blount came up, the professor stabbed him with a sharp forefinger.

“Well, we’re here, young man,” he barked.  “If you’ve been telling me fibs about those Megalosauridae which you said could be dug out of your sage-brush hills, you’ll pay our fare back home again—­just make up your mind to that.  Now show us the best hotel in this mushroom city of yours, and do it quickly.”