break the engagement? That's what I want to do, but it will
hurt him a good deal."

"Wait. Give yourself and him a chance. In a few days we'll be started
home."

"That's what I've been telling myself. Everything here reminds me
of--_him_. It will be different then, I try to think. But--down in my
heart I don't think it will."

"And I know it will," the matron told her promptly. "Time, my dear,
heals all our woes. Youth has great recuperative power. In a year you
will wonder how he ever cast such a spell over you."

Moya heard the last belated reveler pass down the corridor to his room
before she fell asleep. When she awoke it was to see a long shaft of
early sunshine across the bed.

She rose, took her bath, and dressed for walking. Her desire drew the
steps of the young woman away from the busy street toward the suburb.
She walked, as always, with the elastic resilience of unfettered youth.
But the weight that had been at her heart for two days--since she had
learned from Jack Kilmeny's lips that he was a highgrader--was still
tied there too securely to be shaken away by the wonder of the glorious
newborn day.

Returning to the hotel, she met a man on the porch whose face stirred
instantly a fugitive memory. He came to her at once, a big
leather-skinned man with the weatherbeaten look of the West.

"Aren't you the Miss Dwight I've heard Jack Kilmeny mention?"

"Yes. This is Mr. Colter, isn't it?"

He nodded, watching her with hard narrowed eyes. "Something's wrong. Can
you tell me what it is? Jack's mules--two of them, anyhow--came back to
the barn during the night with bits of broken harness still attached to
them. Looks like there had been a runaway and the wagon had come to
grief. The keeper of the livery stable says Bell took the wagon around
to Jack's place and left it with him. He was seen driving out of town
soon after. He has not been seen since."

Her heart flew to alarm. "You mean ... you think he has been hurt?"

"Don't know. He's not in town. That's a cinch. I've raked Goldbanks with
a toothcomb. Where is he?"

"Couldn't he be at his mine?"

"I sent a boy out there. He's not at the Jack Pot."

"What is it that you think? Tell me," she cried softly.

"You're his friend, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"There's some talk around town that he was held up by Bleyer. I came up
here to see him or Verinder. Foul play of some kind, that's my guess."

"But--you surely don't think that Mr. Bleyer or Mr. V