es of any of its passengers?" said Chivers,
with a keen glance at his companion.

"Nary one! I only got to know it was a small train of only two wagons,
and it sorter melted into Californy through a southern pass, and kinder
petered out, and no one ever heard of it agin, and that was all."

"That was NOT all, Collinson," said Chivers lazily. "I saw the train
arrive at South Pass. I was awaiting a friend and his wife. There was
a lady with them, one of the survivors. I didn't hear her name, but I
think my friend's wife called her 'Sadie.' I remember her as a rather
pretty woman--tall, fair, with a straight nose and a full chin, and
small slim feet. I saw her only a moment, for she was on her way to
Los Angeles, and was, I believe, going to join her husband somewhere in
the Sierras."

The rascal had been enjoying with intense satisfaction the return of
the dull glow in Collinson's face, that even seemed to animate the
whole length of his angular frame as it turned eagerly towards him. So
he went on, experiencing a devilish zest in this description of his
mistress to her husband, apart from the pleasure of noting the slow
awakening of this apathetic giant, with a sensation akin to having
warmed him into life. Yet his triumph was of short duration. The fire
dropped suddenly out of Collinson's eyes, the glow from his face, and
the dull look of unwearied patience returned.

"That's all very kind and purty of yer, Mr. Chivers," he said gravely;
"you've got all my wife's pints thar to a dot, and it seems to fit her
jest like a shoe I picked up t'other day. But it wasn't my Sadie, for
ef she's living or had lived, she'd bin just yere!"

The same fear and recognition of some unknown reserve in this trustful
man came over Chivers as before. In his angry resentment of it he
would have liked to blurt out the infidelity of the wife before her
husband, but he knew Collinson would not believe him, and he had
another purpose now. His full lips twisted into a suave smile.

"While I would not give you false hopes, Mr. Collinson," he said, with
a bland smile, "my interest in you compels me to say that you may be
over confident and wrong. There are a thousand things that may have
prevented your wife from coming to you,--illness, possibly the result
of her exposure, poverty, misapprehension of your place of meeting,
and, above all, perhaps some false report of your own death. Has it
ever occurred to you that it is as poss