ut Brodie? And Mr. Gratton?"

"They don't know where it is! They can't know, since we've got the
Bible, and Honeycutt was dead before they got to him! If they knew they
would have been on their way already. And I'll be striking out before
dawn, leaving no such trail that they can follow it in a hurry, even if
they should seek to. No; Brodie and Gratton and the rest of them have
lost the game!"

"You are going so soon? Papa wanted that?"

"He wanted me to telephone as soon as I got this." He rose, lingering
over her. "We mustn't forget him, even for our own happiness." He
brushed her hair with his lips; he hastened the few steps to the
telephone in Ben's study.

"I--I am going upstairs, Mark," called Gloria after him.

"All right, Queen of the World," he answered her. "I'm just to phone in
a message for him. It won't take me five minutes to get it done; just to
say: 'Tell Ben that I start at dawn and that he's got my word for it
that nothing's going to stop me! And--that I've just married Gloria!'"

But he was at the telephone longer than he thought to be. The operator
buzzed into his ear as he took down the receiver; San Francisco was
trying to get a message through. For Gloria Gaynor. Would he take the
message? Then an operator in San Francisco, droning the words: "For Miss
Gloria Gaynor. Your father is hurt in Coloma. Just sent me word. Says
not dangerously, but I must go to him immediately. Meet me there.
Mamma."

"Got it," said King, and San Francisco rang off. Thereafter he got his
own message through; he wondered how Mrs. Gaynor would take the news of
her new son-in-law. Ben would be glad; he was sure of Ben.

Gloria was still upstairs. King sat in front of the fire, staring into
the flames, listening to the wind in the chimney, waiting for Gloria.
When time passed and she did not come, he went softly upstairs and to
her door. It was closed and he knocked lightly, then dropped his hand to
the knob, awaiting her voice.

His knuckles had hardly brushed the door, this door which he approached
in reverence; Gloria had not even heard him. He called softly, his voice
little above a whisper:

"Gloria!" He heard her move; for a moment she did not answer. He could
not know how she stood, scarcely breathing, her hands at her breast; nor
how, now that the great step was taken, she was again half-frightened,
half-regretful, altogether bewildered and uncertain. Of herself, of him,
of everything----

"Is it you,