op to-night at the Grand Hotel--that is, if they ain't too much
crowded; it'll be nice for the lady," said the guide, who had had his
little joke and who now wished to serve his employers as best he could;
"but first we'll take the horses into the dinin'-room; nobody will
object; I've done it afore."

He rode towards a side-door, but over the main entrance Harley saw in
tessellated letters the words "Grand Hotel," and he tried to shake off
the feeling of weirdness that it gave him.

The door to the dining-room, which was almost level with the ground, was
gone, and with some driving the horses were persuaded to enter. They
were tethered there, sheltered from the storm, and, when they moved,
their feet rumbled hollowly on the wooden floor. Sylvia, the candidate,
and his friends, driven by the same impulse, turned back into the snow
and re-entered the house by the front door.

They passed into a wide hall, and at the far end they saw the clerk's
desk. Lying upon it were some fragments of paper fastened to a chain,
and Harley knew that it was what was left of the hotel register. It
spoke so vividly of both life and death that the five stopped.

"Would you like to register, Mr. Grayson?" asked Harley, wishing to
relieve the tension.

The candidate laughed mirthlessly.

"Not to-night, Harley," he said; "but, gloomy as the place is, we ought
to be thankful that we have found it. See how the storm is rising."

He glanced at Sylvia, and deep gratitude swelled up in his breast.
Grewsome as it might look, Queen City was now, indeed, a place of
refuge. But he had no word of reproach for her, because she had insisted
upon coming. He knew that a snow-storm had not entered into her
calculations, as it had not entered into his, and, moreover, no one in
the party had shown more courage or better spirits.

The snow drove in at the unsheltered windows, and a long whine arose as
the wind whirled around the old house. The guide came in with cheerful
bustle and stamp of feet.

"Don't linger here, gentlemen and ladies," he said. "The house is yours.
Come into the parlor. We've had a piece of luck. Now and then a lone
tramp or a miner seeks shelter in this town, just as we have done; they
come mostly to the hotel, and some feller who gathered up wood failed to
burn it all. I'll have a fire in the parlor in five minutes, and then we
can ring for hot drinks for the men, a lemonade for the lady, and a warm
dinner for all. I'll take stra