"Go, go!" she cried. "I will come!"

And, touched with the woman's frantic fears, Randall Clayton sprang
into the carriage. Through the blinding storm he had reached the
New York side before he thought of his own movements, of the morrow,
of his coming friend, and of his wary enemies.

Then he resolutely made up his mind to fight the warring Fates to
a finish.

He drove to the Astor House, dismissed his driver with a ransom
fee, and there hid himself in an upper room.

When he presented himself at the half-deserted office of the Western
Trading Company, upon the next morning, he was clad in unfamiliar
garb.

His blood-shot eyes told of a vigil of mental suffering, and he
dared say nothing as he gruffly bowed when Mr. Somers told him of
Robert Wade's continued illness.

"I am going down to the election," said the old accountant. And
so you will be in charge, as Mr. Ferris has not been heard from.
There is no one here but you to represent the management."

"Trapped," muttered Clayton, who listened every moment for some
tidings of the woman whose silken hair had wound its delicate meshes
around him in the storm. "Dying; dead, perhaps," he groaned, in an
agony of excitement, and then and there he swore that, upon the
arrival of Witherspoon he would leave the cave of his enemies, await