to accept help from any one--that's the Macpherson of it--and now, they
tell me, he is one of the important men of the country."

She was sometimes tempted to mention the extent of his holdings, and put
the acreage well up into the thousands, but since Miss Macpherson was a
truthful woman with a sensitive conscience, she contented herself with
declaring, merely:

"My nephew, Wallace Macpherson, has a large ranch, oh, a very large
place--several days' ride around it."

He was all she had, and blood is far thicker than water. She was hungry
for a sight of him, and every day increased her yearning. While letters
from him now arrived regularly, he said nothing in any of them of
coming to Florida. His extensive interests, she presumed, detained him,
and he was too good a business man to neglect affairs that needed him.

She had promised to go to him next summer, but next summer was a long
way off and there were times when she was strongly tempted to make the
journey in winter in spite of the northern blizzards of which, while
fanning themselves, they read with gusto.

A blizzard was raging at present, according to the paper from which Mr.
Appel was reading the headlines aloud to the group on the veranda. All
trains were stalled west of the Mississippi and there was three feet of
snow on the level in Denver.

"That reminds me----"

Only too well Mr. Cone knew what Mr. Budlong's remark portended. The
hotel proprietor was having an interesting conversation with Mrs. Appel
upon the relative merits of moth-preventatives, but he arose abruptly.

Mr. Budlong squared away again.

"That reminds me that I was wondering this morning how deep the snow
would be at that point where Mr. Stott slid down the glacier in the
gold-pan. By the way, Mr. Cone, have you heard that story? It's a good
one."

Edging toward the doorway, Mr. Cone fairly chattered in his vehemence:

"Oh, yes--yes--yes!"

Mr. Penrose interrupted eagerly:

"The drifts must be about forty feet high on that stretch south of The
Lolabama. There's a gap in the mountain where the wind comes through
a-whoopin'. I mean the place where the steer chased Aunt Lizzie--did any
one ever tell you that yarn, Cone?"

Mr. Cone, with one foot over the door-sill and clinging to the jamb, as
if he half expected they would wrench him loose and make him go back and
listen, answered with unmistakable irony:

"I think I recall having heard someone mention it."

It required mo