sively.

"I surely would, when I think of the suffering there will be," Virginia
replied. "Our staying won't help matters any."

"Not a bit! Not a bit," Champers asserted. "It's too bad you can't go."

Virginia looked up wonderingly.

"Madam, I haven't no supplies. They're all gone, I think. But if you'll
come in right after dinner, I'll see if I can't do something. I'm a humane
man."

"I'll be here at one o'clock," she replied.

It was the last hope, and anything was better than utter failure in her
errand.

When she registered her name at the hotel for dinner, Virginia's eye was
caught by the two names on the page. Both belonged to strangers, but it
was the sharp contrast of the writing that made her read them. One
recorded in a cramped little hand the name of Thomas Smith, Wilmington,
Delaware. The other in big, even, backward slanting letters spelled out
the name of John Jacobs, Cincinnati, Ohio.

The dining room was crowded with men when Virginia entered. Whoever is
hunting for evidence of good breeding and unselfishness, must not expect
too much in any eating-house, be it dining car on the Empire Limited or
grub shack on the western frontier, if only men are accustomed to feed
there. The best places were filled with noisy talkers and eaters, who
stared at her indifferently, and it was not until Gretchen Wyker,
tow-haired, pimpled, and short-necked like her father, chose to do so,
that she finally pointed out a chair at a shabby side table and waved her
empty tin waiter toward it. Virginia was passing the long table of staring
men to reach this seat, when a man rose from the small table at the other
side of the room and crossed hastily to her.

"Excuse me, madam," he said politely. "Will you come over to our table? We
are strangers to you, but you will get better service here than you might
get alone. My name is Jacobs. I saw you in the store this morning, and I
know nearly every man in your settlement."

It was a small service, truly, but to Virginia it was a grateful one in
that embarrassing moment.

"You can take Dr. Carey's place. He's away today, locating a claim on the
upper fork of Grass River somewhere. He hasn't been back a month, but he's
busy as ever. Tell me about your neighborhood," Jacobs said.

Virginia told the story of the community that differed little from the
story of the whole frontier line of Kansas settlements in the early
seventies.

"Do you have hope of help through Mr. Cham