ew Hampshire, once, didn't you?"

An odd look crossed the woman's face.

"Well, I ain't sayin' that."

"But you did--please say that you did," begged Cordelia. "You see, I'm
so anxious to find you!"

A look that was almost terror came to the woman's eyes now.

"I don't know nothin' what you're talkin' about, and I don't want to
know, neither," she finished coldly, turning squarely around in her
seat.

Cordelia hesitated; then she stammered:

"If--if you think it's because your mother will scold you, I can assure
you that she will not. She is very anxious to hear from you--that's all.
She's been so worried! She wants to know if you're doing well, and all
that."

"What _are_ you talking about?" demanded the woman, turning sharply back
to Cordelia.

"Your--mother."

"My mother is--dead, Miss."

"Oh-h!" gasped Cordelia. "You mean you _aren't_ Mrs. Lizzie Higgins--she
that was Lizzie Snow of Sunbridge, New Hampshire, who eloped with Mr.
Higgins and ran away to Texas years ago?"

The woman laughed. Her face cleared. Whatever it was that she had
feared--she evidently feared it no longer.

"No, Miss. My name isn't 'Lizzie,' and it wa'n't 'Snow,' and I never
heard of Sunbridge, New Hampshire."

"O dear!" quavered Cordelia. "Mrs. Snow will be so sorry--that is, of
course she'll be glad, too; for you aren't--" With a little gasp of
dismay Cordelia pulled herself up before the words were uttered, but not
before their meaning was quite clear to the woman.

"Oh, yes, she'll be glad, too, no doubt," she cut in bitterly; "because
I'm not exactly what a woman would want for a lost daughter, now, am I?"

Cordelia blushed painfully.

"Oh, please, please don't talk like that! I am sure Mrs. Snow would be
glad to find any one for a daughter--she wants her so! And she's
her--mother, you know."

The woman's face softened.

"All right," she smiled, a little bitterly. "If I find her I'll send her
to you."

"Oh, will you? Thank you so much," cried Cordelia. "And there are some
others, too, that I'm hunting for. Maybe you can find them--traveling
around so much as you do. If you've got a little piece of paper and a
pencil, I'll just write them down, please."

Thus it happened that when the prairie schooners "sailed away" (again
to quote Tilly), one of them carried a bit of paper on which had been
written full instructions how to proceed should the wife of its owner
ever run across John Sanborn, Lizzie Higgins, Lester