"No, you are not; and neither is your Uncle Sidney."
"Is he still formidable to you?" she laughed.
"He is, indeed. But, worse than that, he is likely to prove a very considerable disturbing element if I can't keep him from plunging in upon us."
She let half of the remaining distance to the end of the steep grade go underfoot before she said: "I like to help people, sometimes; but I don't like to do it in the dark."
He would have explained instantly to a man for the sake of gaining an ally. But he could not bring himself to the point of telling her the story of graft and misrule in which the MacMorroghs were the principals, and North—and her uncle, by implication—the backers.
So he said: "It is rather a long story, and you would scarcely understand it. We have been having constant trouble with the MacMorroghs, the contractors, and there is a bad state of affairs in the grading camps. It has come to a point where I shall have to fight the MacMorroghs to some sort of a finish, and—well, to put it very baldly, I don't want to have to fight the MacMorroghs and the president in the same round."
"Why should Uncle Sidney take the part of these men, if they are bad men, Mr. Ford?"
"Because he has always distrusted my judgment, and because he is loyal to Mr. North, whom he has made my superior. Mr. North tells him that I am to blame."
"But it must be a very dreadful condition of things, if what Mr. Frisbie said is all true."
"Frisbie spoke of only one little incident. Trouble like this we're having to-day is constantly arising. No money-making graft is too petty or too immoral for the MacMorroghs to connive at. They rob and starve their laborers, and cheat the company with bad work. I've got to have a free hand in dealing with them, or—"