little depot? Oh, yes--thank you! I almost forgot that umbrella, and I
might need it. Yes, I'll write to you--I should hate to drop out of
your mind completely. Address me Mrs. Manley Fleetwood, Hope, Montana.
Good-by--I wish--"

She trailed off down the aisle with eyes shining, in the wake of the
grinning porter. She hurried down the steps, glanced hastily along the
platform, up at the car window where the faded little school teacher was
smiling wearily down at her, waved her hand, threw a dainty little kiss,
nodded a gay farewell, smiled vaguely at the conductor, who had been
respectfully pleasant to her--and then she was looking at the rear platform
of the receding train mechanically, not yet quite realizing why it was that
her heart went heavy so suddenly. She turned then and looked about her in
a surprised, inquiring fashion. Manley, it would seem, was not at hand to
welcome her. She had expected his face to be the first she looked upon in
that town, but she tried not to be greatly perturbed at his absence; so
many things may detain one.

At that moment a young fellow, whose clothes emphatically proclaimed him a
cowboy, came diffidently up to her, tilted his hat backward an inch or so,
and left it that way, thereby unconsciously giving himself an air of candor
which should have been reassuring.

"Fleetwood was detained. You were expecting to--you're the lady he was
expecting, aren't you?"

She had been looking questioningly at her violin box and two trunks
standing on their ends farther down the platform, and she smiled vaguely
without glancing at him.