She was not a woman now, but the desolate little girl whom he had found
alone in the mountains, vainly trying to bury her massacred dead, and
whom he had carried away on his saddle-bow. All the long years of
protection and tenderness that he had given her came back to him; there
was only the image of the slim little girl with flying curls who ran to
meet him and who called him "Daddy!"

That little girl was lost out there on the plain, and as sure as the sun
had gone from the heavens a snow-storm was coming fast on the wings of
the southwestern wind. He knew, and his heart was filled with grief and
despair; no rage was left there; that fire had burned out completely,
and it seemed to the "King" that it never could be lighted again. It was
wonderful now to him that the flame could ever have been so fierce. And
the boy Harley was lost, too. Mr. Plummer again remembered, and with a
certain admiration, how brave Harley had been, and he remembered, too,
that when he first saw him his impulse was to like him greatly.

He ran back towards the swell where he had last beheld them, hoping to
find them or at least to follow upon their traces before the snow fell
and hid the trail. He was an old frontiersman, and with a favorable soil
he might do it. But long before he reached the swell the snow flew, and
the brown clouds and the whirling flakes together blotted out all the
plain, save the little circle in which he stood.

He raised his powerful voice and called in tones that carried far,
"Sylvia! Sylvia!" But no sound came back save the lonely cry of the wind
and the soft, whirring rush of the snow, like the soft beat of wings.
The "King" was a brave and sanguine man, physically and mentally
disposed to hope, but his heart dropped like lead in water. He saw the
slim little girl, with flying brown hair, dead and cold in the snow.
Then his courage came back, and with it all his mental coolness. He did
not seek to rush after them, floundering here and there in the
semi-darkness and calling vainly, but hurried back to the town.

The people had just returned from the candidate's speech, and were
crowding into the lobby of the hotel to shake Mr. Grayson's hand and to
tell him that he would win by a "million majority." The candidate was
enduring this ordeal with his usual good-nature and grace, although the
crowded room was hot and close, and the odor of steaming boots arose.

Into this packed mass of human beings "King" Plummer bur