two fainter lights toiling up the road--the buggy lights of the doctor,
hastily summoned from Carterville to the bedside of the dying Dick
Lasham.


The slowing up of his train caused Bob Falloner to start from a half
doze in a Western Pullman car. As he glanced from his window he could
see that the blinding snowstorm which had followed him for the past six
hours had at last hopelessly blocked the line. There was no prospect
beyond the interminable snowy level, the whirling flakes, and the
monotonous palisades of leafless trees seen through it to the distant
banks of the Missouri. It was a prospect that the mountain-bred Falloner
was beginning to loathe, and although it was scarcely six weeks since
he left California, he was already looking back regretfully to the deep
slopes and the free song of the serried ranks of pines.

The intense cold had chilled his temperate blood, even as the rigors and
conventions of Eastern life had checked his sincerity and spontaneous
flow of animal spirits begotten in the frank intercourse and brotherhood
of camps. He had just fled from the artificialities of the great
Atlantic cities to seek out some Western farming lands in which he
might put his capital and energies. The unlooked-for interruption of his
progress by a long-forgotten climate only deepened his discontent. And
now--that train was actually backing! It appeared they must return to
the last station to wait for a snow-plough to clear the line. It was,
explained the conductor, barely a mile from Shepherdstown, where there
was a good hotel and a chance of breaking the journey for the night.

Shepherdstown! The name touched some dim chord in Bob Falloner's memory
and conscience--yet one that was vague. Then he suddenly remembered that