lor in Miss Morgan's face deepened, and she glanced, not at "King"
Plummer or her uncle, but at Harley, and when her eyes met his the color
in her cheeks deepened still further. Then she looked down at her plate
and was silent and embarrassed.

Harley, as he heard these words of the "King," felt a strange thrill of
disapproval. It was, as he told himself, because of the disparity in
ages. It was true that a man of this type was the very kind to restrain
Sylvia Morgan, but twenty and fifty should never wed, man and wife
should be young together and should grow old together. It was no
business of his, and there was no obligation upon him to look after the
happiness of either of these people, but it was an arrangement that he
did not like, violating as it did his sense of fitness.

"King" Plummer was to leave them an hour later, taking a train for St.
Paul, and thence for Idaho. He bade them all a hearty good-bye, shaking
hands warmly with Jimmy Grayson, to whom he wished a career of unbroken
triumph, repeating these good wishes to Mrs. Grayson, and again kissing
Sylvia Morgan on the forehead--the proper kiss, Harley thought, for
fifty to bestow upon twenty, unless twenty should happen to be fifty's
daughter.

"We won't be separated long, Sylvia, girl," he said, and she flushed a
deep red and then turned pale. To Harley he said:

"And I'll try to show you the West, young man, when you come out there.
This is no West; Milwaukee ain't West by a jugful. Just you wait till
you get beyond the Missouri, then we'll show you the real West, and real
life at the same time."

There was a certain condescension in the tone of "King" Plummer, but
Harley did not mind it; so far as the experience of life in the rough
was concerned, the "King" had a right to condescend.

"I shall hold you to your promise," he said.

Then "King" Plummer, waving good-byes with a wide-armed sweep, large and
hearty like himself, departed.

"There goes a true man," said Mr. Grayson, and Harley spontaneously
added confirmation. But Miss Morgan was silent. She waved back in
response to the King of the Mountains, but her face was still pale, and
she was silent for some time. Harley now knew that "King" Plummer was
not her uncle nor her next of kin after Jimmy Grayson in any way, but he
was unable to tell why this marriage-to-be had been arranged.

But he quickly learned the secret, if secret it was; it was told to him
on the train by Mrs. Grayson as they