The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-06-27

''Is IT WORTH WHILE TO THROW ME OVER
 BOARD?"
 intends to kill you You can take it straight. He means it. And that was what brought me up here tonight, not that memorandum on your desk calen- dar."
 For long time after the door had jared to its shutting behind Hallock LidgerwOod sat at his desk idle and abstractedly thoughtful. Twice with in the interval he pulled out a small drawer under the roll top and made as if he would take up the weapon it contained, and each time he closed the drawer to break with the tempta-i ton to put the pistol into his pocket.
 Later, after he had forced himself to go to work. door slammed some where in the dispatchers end of the building, and automatically his hand shot out to the closed drawer. Then he made his decision and carried it out. Taking the nickel plated thing from its hiding place and breaking it to eject the cartridges, he went to the end door of the corridor. which opened Into the unused space under the raft CTS, and flung the weapon to the far thest corner of the dark loft.
 Lidgerwood had found little difficulty in getting on the companionable side of Dawson, so far as the heavy muscled. silent young draftsman had a cempan- ionable side, and an invitation to the family dinner table at the Dawson cot tage on the low mesa above the town had followed as a matter of course.
 Once within the home circle, with Benson to plead his cause with the meek little woman whose brown eyes held the shadow of a deep trouble, Lidgerwood had still less difficulty in arranging to share Benson's permanent table welcome.
 Lidgerwood's acceptance as table boarder in the cottage on the mesa being hospitably prompt, he was com ing and going as regularly as his over sight of the 300 miles of demoraliza tion permitted before the buffoonery of the Red Butte Western suddenly laugh ed itself out and war was declared. Tn the interval he had come to concur very heartily in Benson's opposition tO dS dIln Dd WSOH pOSSlOiC choice.
 There was little to be done in this field, however. Gridley came and went. not too often. figuring always as friend of the family and usurping no more of Miss Dawson's time and at tention than she seemed willing to bestow upon him. Lidgerwood saw no chance TO obstruct and no good reason for obstructing. At all events, Gridley cid not furnish the reason.
 After the storm broke there were no more quiet evenings on the cottage porch for a harassed superintendent. Lidgerwood came and went as before when the rapidly recurring wrecks did not keep him out on the line. but he scrupulously left his troubles behind him when he climbed to the cottage on the mesa.
 Quite naturally his silence on the one topic which was stirring the Red desert from the Crosswater hills to Timanyoni canyon was a poor mask. The increasing gravity of the situation wrote itself plainly enough In his face, and Faith Dawson was sor " for him, giving him silent sympathy unasked if not wholly unexpected. The town talk of Angels, what little of it reach ed the cottage, was harshly condem natory of the new superintendent.
 After the mysterious disappearance of the switching engine-mystery still unsolved and apparently unsolvable- he struck fast and hard searching painstakingly for the leaders in the re- bellion, reprimanding, suspending and discharging until McCloskey warned him that in addition to the evil of short handing the road he was filling An gels with growing army of ex-em- ployees, desperate and ripe for any thing.
 Gro Be Continued.)
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