"It ought to be a girl with a temperament that is at once a match and foil for his own. She should have a sense of humor, a gift for light and ironic speech that can stir him without irritating him, because he is perhaps of a cautious disposition, and hence would be well matched with one a little bit impulsive, each exercising the proper influence upon the other. She should be strong, too, habituated to physical hardship, as our Western girls are. Such a marriage, I think, would be ideal, and I expect you, Mr. Plummer, when you rejoin us, to help me make it, should the opportunity arise. Yours sincerely, "ANNA GRAYSON." She folded the sheets, put them in the envelope, and addressed them. It was the second time that she had written to Mr. Plummer, but with a very different motive, and she had more confidence in the second letter than she had ever felt in the first. "That will cause him pain," she reflected, "but the task cannot be done without it." In her heart she was genuinely sorry for Mr. Plummer, thinking at that moment more of his grief than of her husband's risk, but she was resolute to mail the letter, nevertheless. She read it a little later to Mr. Grayson, and he approved. "It is likely to bring 'King' Plummer raging down from Idaho, but it ought to go," he said. A half-hour later, this letter, written in a delicate, feminine hand, but heavy with fate, was speeding northwestward. XVIII THE SACRIFICE A few days after writing this letter, Mrs. Grayson announced that Sylvia would rejoin them on the following afternoon, having shortened her stay in Salt Lake City, as her relations were about to depart on a visit to California. "She wants very much to go on with us," said Mrs. Grayson, "and rather than send her either to Boise or to our home, where she would be alone, we are willing for her to continue." "I should think you would be!" exclaimed Hobart. "Why, Mrs. Grayson, much as we esteem you, we would start a violent rebellion if you should send Miss Morgan away, a rebellion attended by bloodshed and desperate deeds." Mrs. Grayson smiled and glanced at Harley, who was silent. But she did not fail to see the flash of pleasure under his veiled eyelids. "Keep your pistol in your pocket and your sword in its sheath, Mr. Hobart," she said; "I shall not give you occasion to use either." "Then I declare for peace." Sylvia joined them at the time mentioned by Mrs. Grayson, quiet, slightly pale, and disposed, in the opinion of the Graysons, to much thought. "The girl has something on her mind which she cannot put off," said Tremaine, and in this case he was right.