can shelter
to-night the next President of the United States."

"Thank you for the invitation," said Jimmy Grayson, gravely. "I shall be
glad to join you with my family and Mr. Harley. Mr. Harley has become in
a sense one of my advisers, almost a lieutenant, I might say."

Mr. Anderson was not intending to ask Harley, as the correspondent knew,
but the candidate had included him so deftly that the important citizen
must do so, too, and he widened the invitation with courtesy. Harley,
always in search of new types, always anxious to explore the secrets of
new lands, accepted as promptly as if the request had been spontaneous.

Although his house was only a few hundred yards away, Mr. Anderson took
them there in his two-seated, highly polished carriage, drawn by a pair
of seal-brown trotters. "Good horses," he said, as he cracked his whip
contentedly over them. "I brought them all the way from Kentucky. Cost
me a lot, too."

The Anderson house was really fine, built of light stone, standing far
back on a wide lawn, and Harley could see that the good taste of some
one had presided at its birth. It had an Eastern air of quiet and
completion. When Mr. Anderson, glancing at his guests, beheld the look
of approval on their faces, he was pleased, and said, in an easy,
off-hand manner:

"Been up only four years; planned it myself, with a little help from
wife and daughter."

Harley at once surmised that the good effect was due to the taste of the
wife or daughter, or both, and he was confirmed in the opinion when he
met Mrs. Anderson, a slight, modest woman, superior to her husband in
some respects that Harley thought important. The daughter did not appear
until just before dinner, but when she came into the parlor to meet the
guest the correspondent held his breath for a moment.

Rare and beautiful flowers bloom now and then on the cold plains of the
great Northwest, and Harley said in his heart that Helen Anderson was
one of the rarest and most beautiful of them all. It was not alone the
beauty of face and figure, but it was, even more, the nobility of
expression and a singular touch of pathos, as if neither youth nor
beauty had kept from her a great sadness. This almost hidden note of
sorrow seemed to Harley to make perfect her grace and charm, and he
felt, stranger though he was, that he was willing to sacrifice himself
to protect her from some blow unknown to him. Speaking of it afterwards,
he found that she had th