“I was certain you’d find a way out of the strike trouble,” he asserted blandly. “I told the folks at the dinner-table last evening that I had never seen you knocked out so completely that you were obliged to take the count. How did you do it?”
Tregarvon shook his head. “I didn’t do it; it was done for me. When I came up this morning with Tryon and the trackmen, the teams were ready and waiting. Somebody had rounded them up for me during the night. I have been charging it to you.”
Carfax’s laugh was a sufficient negation of the charge. “Do I look it?” he demanded. “If I do, I can prove an alibi. I spent a very pleasant evening with the Caswells and a bunch of the senior girls, and I am reasonably sure that I didn’t walk in my sleep afterward.”
“Did Richardia go home for the week-end, as usual?”
“She did; though she stayed and took dinner with us at Highmount. I drove her over to Westwood House in the car, later.”
“So the car is all right again, is it?”
“Oh, yes; there wasn’t much the matter with it.”
Tryon had taken over the bossing of the gang, with Rucker for his able second, and Tregarvon was free to stand aside and talk with Carfax about the miracle.
“You say Richardia went home after dinner?” he queried. Then: “I can’t help thinking that this is her doing. These men are all mountaineers.”
Carfax’s chuckle was frankly derisive. “That is mere sentiment on your part; the wish the father to the thought. You’d rather like to feel that you are indebted to her, wouldn’t you? But I shall have to spoil that little day-dream. She was with the rest of us at Highmount until after ten o’clock, and it must have been nearly eleven when I drove her over to Westwood House—much too late to begin any campaign of team-raising for you.”