The heights and depths of life are sounded by emotions--cold reason lags behind. As thought cannot compass, so words cannot describe the anguished spirit's flight; and whether it soars to ecstasy or sinks to despair it comes back wide-eyed and silent. So any action which has been prompted by passion cannot be explained by a calculating mind, and to seek a reason where none exists is to stray still farther from the truth. Virginia Huff was poor and waited on the table for what she could eat and get to wear; and when she returned stock which was worth twelve hundred dollars without even a note of thanks it was not for any reason of the mind. It was a reason of the feelings, the soul, the human ego, which drives our minds and bodies to their tasks; a reason that soared up like a flaming aurora and stabbed the darkened sky with hate and passion. It was nothing to reason about, and yet Wiley reasoned. He put down the stocks and lit his lamp and examined the package carefully. Then he looked inside for some note of explanation and paused and swore to himself. No note was there, nor any sign that the stocks had ever passed through her hands. He rose up craftily and stepped out the door, passing silently from house to house, and then as he came back he threw his door open and examined the snow for tracks. If Death Valley Charley had failed of his mission, if he had neglected to place the shares in her stocking and then sneaked back to get rid of them--but Wiley put all thought of Charley aside for there in the snow was the print of a woman's shoe. Small and dainty it was and he knew in his heart that Virginia had been there and gone. She might have been watching him as he sat at his work, she might even be watching him now; but again something told him that, however she had come, she had gone away in a rage. The stab of the high heel, the heedless step into a mud-puddle, the swinging stride down the trail; all spoke of defiance, of a coming in the open and a return without fear of man or devil. She had come there to see him and, finding him away, she had thrown down the papers and gone home. And that was the answer to his love. Wiley sat down by the fire and tried to account for it. He imagined himself a woman, young and beautiful, but poor; working hard, as Virginia now worked, for her board and keep. Before her there was nothing--her father was dead or lost, her mother a hopeless scold, her fortune irretrievably gone--and yet she closed the only door out. As an earnest of his love, without asking anything in return, he had restored to her a portion of her stock; and she had promptly flung it back. Had Charley made some break in his method of presentation? But no, she would not mind if he had; it was something deeper, behind. He battered his brain, recalling every little incident that might have turned her heart against him, and it all brought him back to the trial.