was from afar.

Amid the kaleidoscopic changes in Mexican affairs, Janice's father had
been laboring for three years and more to hold together the mining
properties conceded to him and his fellow-stockholders by the
administration of Porfirio Diaz. In the battle-ridden State of
Chihuahua Mr. Broxton Day was held a virtual prisoner, by first one
warring faction and then another.

At one time, being friendly with a certain chief of the belligerents,
Mr. Day had taken out ore and had had the mine in good running
condition. Some money had flowed into the coffers of the mining
company. Janice benefited in a way during this season of plenty.

Now, of late, the Yaquis had swept down from the mountains, Mr. Day's
laborers had run away, and his own life was placed in peril again. He
wrote little about his troubles to his daughter, living so far away in
the Vermont village, but his bare mention of conditions was sufficient
to spur Janice's imagination. She was anxious in the extreme.

"If Daddy would only come home on a visit as he had expected to this
Spring!" was the longing thought now in her mind. "Oh, dear me! What
matter if the season does change? It won't bring him back to me.
I'd--I'd sell my darling car and take the money and run away to him if
I dared!"

This was a desperate thought indeed, for the Kremlin automobile her
father had bought Janice the year before remained the apple of her eye.
That very morning Marty had rolled it out of the garage he and his
father had built for it, and started to overhaul it for his cousin.
Marty had become something of a mechanic since the arrival of the
Kremlin at the Day place.

The roads were fast drying up, and Marty promised that the car would
soon be in order. But the thought now served to inspire no
anticipation of pleasure in Janice's troubled mind.

She passed Major Price just at the foot of Hillside Avenue. The major
was Polktown's moneyed man--really the magnate of the village. His was
the largest house on the hill--a broad, high-pillared colonial mansion
with a great, shaded, sloping lawn in front. An important looking
house was the major's and the major was important looking, too.

But Janice noted more particularly than ever before that there were
many purple veins distinctly lined upon the major's nose and cheeks and
that his eyes were moist and wavering in their glance. He used a cane
with a flourish; but his legs had an unsteadiness that a cane