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 less emptiness in her voice. It was as if she had put out her foot to step on a familiar stone and found it gone.

"Maybe I'll see you when you come down to say good-by to Mrs. Charles?" he suggested. "They'll be pulling out in an hour or so. She's going to serve dinner on the new switch."

"I'll lope right back, then," she promised.

"Do," he urged her. "But you'd better hop in, or Kraus will drive off and leave you."

"You'll tell me what your plans are then?" she pressed, lingering a moment on the edge of the platform.

"I'll tell you everything I know," he assured her, with the easy extravagance of one whose treasures did not amount to much.

Elizabeth came hurrying down Custer Street as the work-train engine was coupling to the boarding-cars to pull them out to the switch Bill Chambers had laid to receive them several miles beyond Simrall. Hall was over at the kitchen door, having his parting words with the ladies on wheels. Elizabeth made a spurt of it for the finish, running like a schoolgirl, her knees knocking her skirts, her light feet flung high.

She arrived red and panting from her run, broad-brimmed sombrero in her hand, her hair flying, but triumphant as a winner in a race. She had changed her dress, Hall noticed, for one better designed for walking—a short serge skirt with white waist, which made her look very airy and independent. She had time for only a word with Mrs. Charles and the girls, and a handshake reached up and down from the kitchen door.

Elizabeth and Dr. Hall stood looking after the boarding-train as it pulled away from the town whose pros-