Solemnly the answer came,--in an agony of devotion and love,--"I
promise--yes, mother, I promise."

* * * * *

A month later, the young man was traveling, as fast as modern steam and
steel could carry him, toward the western edge of the continent.

He was flying from the city of his birth, as from a place accursed. He had
set his face toward a new land--determined to work out, there, his
promise--the promise that he did not, at the first, understand.

How he misunderstood,--how he attempted to use his inheritance to carry
out what he first thought was his mother's wish,--and how he came at last
to understand, is the story that I have to tell.




Chapter II

The Woman with the Disfigured Face



The Golden State Limited, with two laboring engines, was climbing the
desert side of San Gorgonio Pass.

Now San Gorgonio Pass--as all men should know--is one of the two eastern