ven up.

Only S. Behrman persisted. He had made up his mind to bring Dyke in. He
succeeded in arousing the same degree of determination in Delaney--by
now, a trusted aide of the Railroad--and of his own cousin, a real
estate broker, named Christian, who knew the mountains and had once been
marshal of Visalia in the old stock-raising days. These two went into
the Sierras, accompanied by two hired deputies, and carrying with them a
month's provisions and two of the bloodhounds loaned by the Santa Clara
sheriff.

On a certain Sunday, a few days after the departure of Christian and
Delaney, Annixter, who had been reading "David Copperfield" in his
hammock on the porch of the ranch house, put down the book and went to
find Hilma, who was helping Louisa Vacca set the table for dinner. He
found her in the dining-room, her hands full of the gold-bordered china
plates, only used on special occasions and which Louisa was forbidden to
touch.

His wife was more than ordinarily pretty that day. She wore a dress of
flowered organdie over pink sateen with pink ribbons about her waist and
neck, and on her slim feet the low shoes she always affected, with their
smart, bright buckles. Her thick, brown, sweet-smelling hair was
heaped high upon her head and set off with a bow of black velvet, and
underneath the shadow of its coils, her wide-open eyes, rimmed with
the thin, black line of her lashes, shone continually, reflecting
the sunlight. Marriage had only accentuated the beautiful maturity of
Hilma's figure--now no longer precocious--defining the single, deep
swell from her throat to her waist, the strong, fine amplitude of her
hips, the sweet feminine undulation of her neck and shoulders. Her
cheeks were pink with health, and her large round arms carried the
piled-up dishes with never a tremour. Annixter, observant enough where
his wife was concerned noted how the reflection of the white china set a
glow of pale light underneath her chin.

"Hilma," he said, "I've been wondering lately about things. We're so
blamed happy ourselves it won't do for us to forget about other people
who are down, will it? Might change our luck. And I'm just likely to
forget that way, too. It's my nature."

His wife looked up at him joyfully. Here was the new Annixter,
certainly.

"In all this hullabaloo about Dyke," he went on "there's some one nobody
ain't thought about at all. That's MRS. Dyke--and the little tad. I
wouldn't be surprised if they w