‘Father!’ Sarah admonished him.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Laurence Melford. ‘I should have remembered that you railroad people have special names, don’t you? What are you, a switchman?’

Collis drew a breath. ‘Mr Melford,’ he said, ‘I will bet you your daughter.’

There was a shocked silence. Sarah glanced at her father with an uneasy expression, and the footman took a couple of steps back. Then, without a word, Laurence Melford pushed his daughter away, back through the curtains, making her disappear like a stage conjuring trick. For a moment the strained, histrionic voice of Rodney Mulgrave wafted into the corridor: ‘… there is nothing in between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.’

‘The Winter’s Tale,’ said Collis, surprised at his own knowledge.

Laurence Melford was angry, and unimpressed. He raised one solid finger to Collis, and when he spoke his voice was deep as a rumbling cistern.

‘I don’t know who you are,’ he said. ‘What’s more, I have no desire to know. But I should warn you that I have dealt with opportunists and rapscallions of your sort before, and that I once had a man of your age hanged from the end beam of the Old Adobe, so that the birds could pick him. You have been forward, and impertinent, and if I ever see you near me or my family again, I’ll have you run into jail as fast as you like. I can do that, you know, and you’d better understand it. Now, get out of here, before I have your arms broken.’

‘The bet still stands,’ said Collis. ‘If you’re going to insult me by calling me an artisan, then damn it I’ll live up to your insult, and I’ll work like an artisan, and I’ll build that damned railroad just to show you that an artisan can do whatever a cowpoke can do, and have the cowpoke’s daughter besides.’

‘You infamous young jelly,’ growled Laurence Melford. ‘If you knew how many of your sort I’ve thrown out of my front door, you wouldn’t even have the nerve to stand where you are.’

The footman stepped forward, unbuttoning the cuffs of his coat, and Collis glanced at him warily.

‘I’m going anyway,’ said Collis. ‘But I’m sure we’ll meet each other again, don’t you, when I’m in better circumstances and you’re in a better temper?’

Melford, stiff with anger, parted the curtains of his box. But before he returned to his family he raised his finger to Collis just once more.

‘I warn you,’ he said. ‘By all the stars above, I warn you. Don’t meddle with affairs that are far beyond you.’