"Not a bit—not a bit!" the good-natured Scotch Editor made answer. "You took the right way with him at the beginning. He’ll probably call you a scoundrel and a blackguard in one or two obscure papers; but that won’t break bones." "I have a stout oak cudgel that can, though," said Vincent, "if there should be need." It was a long and a lonely journey; Vincent was in no mood for making acquaintances; and doubtless his fellow-passengers considered him an excellent specimen of the proud and taciturn travelling Englishman. But at last he came in sight of the wide valley of the Missouri, with its long mud-banks and yellow water-channels; and beyond that again the flat plain of the city, dominated by the twin-spired High School perched on a distant height. And he could see how Omaha had grown even within the short time that had elapsed since his last visit; where he could remember one-storeyed tenements stuck at haphazard amongst trees and waste bits of green there were now streets with tram-cars and important public buildings; the city had extended in every direction; it was a vast wilderness of houses that he beheld beyond the wide river. Perhaps Maisrie had been surprised too—on coming back to her old home? Alas! it seemed so big a place in which to search for any one; and he knew of no kindly Scotch Editor who might help. And very soon he got to recognise that Hugh Anstruther’s warnings had been well founded. Omaha seemed to have no past, nor any remembrance of bygone things; the city was too busy pushing ahead to think of those who had gone under, or left. It is true that at the offices of the Union Pacific Railway, he managed to get some scant information about the young engineer with whom fortune had dealt so hardly; but these were not personal reminiscences; there were new men everywhere, and Maisrie’s father had not been known to any of them. As for the child-orphan and the old man who had come to adopt her, who was likely to remember them? They were not important enough; Omaha had its ’manifest destiny’ to think of; besides, they were now gone some years—and some years in a western city is a century.