t had carried him through trivial affairs of
the past, and left him floundering vaguely in seas that looked old and
yet were new. Hourly, he sought for the first sign of love in her eyes,
for the first touch of sentiment; but if there was a point of weakness
in her defence, it was not revealed to the hungry perception of the
would-be conqueror. And so they drifted on through the February chill,
that seemed warm to them, through the light hours and the dark ones,
quickly and surely to the day which was to call him cured of one ill and
yet sorely afflicted by another.

Through it all he was saying to himself that it did not matter what her
birth may have been, so long as she lived at this hour in his life, and
yet a still, cool voice was whispering procrastination with ding-dong
persistency through every avenue of his brain. "Wait!" said the cool
voice of prejudice. His heart did not hear, but his brain did. One look
of submission from her tender eyes and his brain would have turned deaf
to the small, cool voice--but her eyes stood their ground and the voice
survived.

The day was fast approaching when it would be necessary for him to leave
the home of Mr. Crow. He could no longer encroach upon the hospitality
and good nature of the marshal--especially as he had declined the
proffered appointment to become deputy town marshal. Together they had
discussed every possible side to the abduction mystery and had laid the
groundwork for a systematic attempt at a solution. There was nothing
more for them to do. True to his promise, Bonner had put the case in the
hands of one of the greatest detectives in the land, together with every
known point in the girl's history. Tinkletown was not to provide the
solution, although it contained the mystery. On that point there could
be no doubt; so, Mr. Bonner was reluctantly compelled to admit to
himself that he had no plausible excuse for staying on. The great
detective from New York had come to town, gathered all of the facts
under cover of strictest secrecy, run down every possible shadow of a
clew in Boggs City, and had returned to the metropolis, there to begin
the search twenty-one years back.

"Four weeks," Bonner was saying to her reflectively, as they came
homeward from their last visit to the abandoned mill on Turnip Creek. It
was a bright, warm February morning, suggestive of spring and fraught
with the fragrance of something far sweeter. "Four weeks of idleness and
joy to me-