Randolph glanced hastily at
her scanty dress, which thereby she blushingly understood to be his
objection.

"If I could get only a blanket from father's wagon! Do you think it
would be possible? Would you be running a risk to try for a blanket, do
you think, Mr. Randolph? If there is any risk, please do not go; but I
am so anxious--so terribly anxious."

He knew she was, and knew the reason she had for her apprehensions; so,
although he mistrusted the result of his errand, he answered simply:
"Certainly; I will go, if you are not afraid to be left alone. _I_ shall
be in no danger."

"O, thank you--thank you! You will bring me a message from my father?"

"I hope so, indeed, since you desire it so much. I think you had better
sit down on this newspaper, and let me cover your shoulders with my
coat."

"No, indeed. If you are going near the fire, you will need it to protect
you from cinders."

But Randolph quickly divested himself of his upper garment, and laid it
lightly over her shivering form; then quietly charging her to feel no
alarm, and as little anxiety as possible, strode rapidly away toward the
fire. Fifteen minutes afterward he returned more slowly, with a blanket,
which Anne rose up to receive.

"My father? Did you see my father?"

"I did not see him. He must have taken his horses off a little distance
for safety, and you may not see him for several hours. Do not indulge in
apprehensions. In the morning we shall find him: it is almost daylight
now."

He pointed to a faint light along the eastern horizon; but her eyes were
blinded with tears.

"It is not like my father to leave me so long--at such a time, too! He
would not care for his horses, nor for anything but me. O, can he have
perished!"

She spoke as though the awful significance of her loneliness had just
dawned upon her. Randolph, from whom the thought had never been absent
from the moment he saw the pillar of flame shooting up over the
Traveler's Rest, was startled by the suddenness of her anguish; and an
expression of profound grief came over his face, noticeable even to her
inattentive eyes, and which comforted her by its sympathy, even in the
midst of her alarm and distress.

The day had dawned when Anne Matheny lifted her tear-swollen face from
her knees, and looked upon the smoking ruins of Wilson's Bar. It was
but a blackened heap of rubbish; yet somewhere in its midst, she felt
assured, were buried the charred remains of her fat