heir meeting was at Silver Plume, where she
had become separated from her father's party, and had boarded the
excursion train, mistaking it for the regular which was to follow
Brockway's special as second section. The obvious thing for Brockway to
have done was to put her off at Georgetown, where the following section
would have picked her up in a few minutes. But he did no such unselfish
thing. Before the excursion train had doubled the final curve of the
Loop he was ready to purchase her continued presence at a price.

This he accomplished by omitting to mention the obvious expedient.
Leaving a message with the Georgetown operator, notifying the President
that his daughter was on the excursion train, Brockway went on his way
rejoicing; and, by a judicious conspiracy with his own conductor and
engineer, managed to keep the special well ahead of the regular all the
way to Denver.

That was the beginning of it, and fate, kindly or unkindly, had added
yet other meetings; at Manitou, at Leadville, and again at Salt Lake
City, where the President's daughter had voluntarily joined Brockway's
sight-seeing party on the strength of an acquaintance with two of the
Boston school-mistresses. The temporary chaperons were kind, and the
friendship had burgeoned into something quite like intimacy before the
"Mormon day" was overpast. But there it had ended. Since that day he had
neither seen her nor heard from her; and when he had come to look the
matter squarely in the face in the light of sober afterthought, he was
minded to put his infatuation under foot, and to try honestly to be glad
that their lives had gone apart. For he had learned that Mr. Francis
Vennor was a multi-millionnaire, and that his daughter was an heiress in
her own right; and no poor gentleman was ever more fiercely jealous of
his poverty rights than was this shrewd young soldier in the unnumbered
army of the dispossessed.

But the intervention of half a continent of space is one thing, and that
of a mere car-length is another. Now that he had to walk but the length
of the Tadmor to be with her again, the eager passion which he had
fondly believed to be safely dead and buried rose up in its might and
threatened to put poverty-pride, and all other calmly considered springs
of action to the sword; did presently run them through, for when
Brockway left the smoking-room of the Ariadne and crossed the jarring
platforms to the door of the Tadmor, he was flogging his w