t after night, as she climbed to her cheerless room and crept to her
scantily-covered, uncomfortable couch, she shrank from all that life could
now hold out to her. Imprisoned she was, to a narrow round of toil, with
no escape, and no one to know or care.

And who knew but that any day an enemy might trace her?

Then the son of the house came home from college in disgrace, and began to
make violent love to her, until her case seemed almost desperate. She
dreaded inexpressibly to make another change, for in some ways her work
was not so hard as it had been in other places, and her wages were better;
but from day to day she felt she could scarcely bear the hourly
annoyances. The other servants, too, were not only utterly
uncompanionable, but deeply jealous of her, resenting her gentle breeding,
her careful speech, her dainty personal ways, her room to herself, her
loyalty to her mistress.

Sometimes in the cold and darkness of the night-vigils she would remember
the man who had helped her, who had promised to be her friend, and had
begged her to let him know if she ever needed help. Her hungry heart cried
out for sympathy and counsel. In her dreams she saw him coming to her
across interminable plains, hastening with his kindly sympathy, but she
always awoke before he reached her.

[Illustration]




IX


It was about this time that the firm of Blackwell, Hanover & Dunham had a
difficult case to work out which involved the gathering of evidence from
Chicago and thereabouts, and it was with pleasure that Judge Blackwell
accepted the eager proposal from the junior member of the firm that he
should go out and attend to it.

As Tryon Dunham entered the sleeper, and placed his suit-case beside him
on the seat, he was reminded of the night when he had taken this train
with the girl who had come to occupy a great part of his thoughts in these
days. He had begun to feel that if he could ever hope to shake off his
anxiety and get back to his normal state of mind, he must find her and