ened it.
Hays blundered in out of the snow with a muttered exclamation, and then,
as the light from the open office door revealed a stranger, started and
fell back.

"Miss Hays is busy," said the woman quietly, "I am afraid, on my
account. But my sleigh broke down on the way to the hotel and I was
forced to get out here. I suppose this is Mr. Hays?"

A strange woman--by her dress and appearance a very worldling--and even
braver in looks and apparel than many he had seen in the cities--seemed,
in spite of all his precautions, to have fallen short of the hotel
and been precipitated upon him! Yet under the influence of some odd
abstraction he was affected by it less than he could have believed. He
even achieved a rude bow as he bolted the door and ushered her into
the office. More than that, he found himself explaining to the fair
trespasser the reasons of his return to his own home. For, like a direct
man, he had a consciousness of some inconsistency in his return--or
in the circumstances that induced a change of plans which might
conscientiously require an explanation.

"You see, ma'am, a rather singular thing happened to me after I passed
the summit. Three times I lost the track, got off it somehow, and found
myself traveling in a circle. The third time, when I struck my own
tracks again, I concluded I'd just follow them back here. I suppose
I might have got the road again by tryin' and fightin' the snow--but
ther's some things not worth the fightin'. This was a matter of
business, and, after all, ma'am, business ain't everythin', is it?"

He was evidently in some unusual mood, the mood that with certain
reticent natures often compels them to make their brief confidences to
utter strangers rather than impart them to those intimate friends who
might remind them of their weakness. She agreed with him pleasantly, but
not so obviously as to excite suspicion. "And you preferred to let your
business go, and come back to the comfort of your own home and family."

"The comfort of my home and family?" he repeated in a dry, deliberate
voice. "Well, I reckon I ain't been tempted much by THAT. That isn't
what I meant." But he went back to the phrase, repeating it grimly, as
if it were some mandatory text. "The comfort of my OWN HOME AND FAMILY!
Well, Satan hasn't set THAT trap for my feet yet, ma'am. No; ye saw my
daughter? well, that's all my family; ye see this room? that's all my
home. My wife ran away from me; my daughter