at doesn't change my plans a
particle. I'll be the husband of the willful little heiress in an hour's
time, or my name isn't--"

"Lester Armstrong," put in the other, laconically.

The coach was instantly stopped, and both men made a flying leap into
the huge snowdrift that banked both sides of the country road, calling
back to the driver to light a lantern, if he had been careful enough to
bring one with him, and hand it to them in double-quick order.

The search lasted for fully half an hour. Had the ground suddenly opened
and swallowed her? they asked each other, with imprecations both loud
and furious.

To have a fortune of a cool million so near his clutches, and suddenly
lose it, was more than the villain could endure calmly. He was frenzied.
His rage at the girl slipping so cleverly, so audaciously, through his
fingers knew no bounds, and he made no attempt to stifle the fierce
exclamations that sprang to his lips of what he should do when he once
found her.

When Faynie had jumped from the vehicle she lay for an instant half
stunned upon the cold, frozen ground where she had fallen. It had taken
the coach a minute to stop, but that minute had carried it several rods
beyond the spot where she lay. She saw by the uncertain glimmer of the
carriage lamp the two forms spring out into the darkness and come back
in search of her, and a piteous cry of unutterable fear rose to her
blanched lips from the very depths of her panting, terror-stricken
heart.

She tried to spring to her feet and fly, but the depth to which she sank
with every step exhausted her quickly, and she sank down among the white
drifts awaiting her doom like a wounded bird in the brush whom the
cruel sportsmen are nearing with their hounds.

She raised her lovely young face to the dark night sky, calling upon God
and the angels to protect her, to save her from the man she had loved
with all the passionate strength of her heart up to that hour, and whom
she hated and feared now a thousandfold more than she had ever loved
him.

All in a few moments of time her idol had fallen from its high pedestal
of manly honor and lay in ruins at her feet.

How could she ever have believed Lester Armstrong noble, good and true,
a king among men? Where was the tenderness in voice and manner that had
won her heart from her, and his oft-repeated assurance that he cared for
her for herself alone; that he wished to Heaven she were no heiress, but
as poor as him