"Sylvia lay hid until night came, and there was silence over the mountain, the silence of death, Mr. Harley, because when she slipped back in the darkness to the emigrant train she found every soul that had been in it, besides herself, dead. Think, Mr. Harley, of that little girl alone in all those vast mountains, with her dead around her! Do you wonder that sometimes she seems hard?" "No, I don't," replied Harley. Despite himself a mist came to his eyes over this pathetic tragedy of long ago. "Sylvia has never said much about that night she spent there with the dead, in the midst of the wrecked and plundered train, but when a number of border men, alarmed about the emigrants, pushed on the next day to save them if possible, what do you suppose they found her doing?" "I can't guess." "She had got a spade somewhere from one of the wagons, and, little as she was, she was trying to bury her own dead. She was so busy that she didn't see them ride up, and William Plummer, their leader--he was a young man then--actually shed tears, so they say. Well, these men finished the burial, and Mr. Plummer put Sylvia on his horse before him and rode away. He adopted the little thing as his daughter. He said she was the bravest creature he had ever seen, and, as he was not likely to have any real daughter, she should take a place that ought to be filled. "Were the Utes who did this massacre punished?" "No one knows; the soldiers killed a number of them in battle, but whether the slain were those who ambushed the train is not decided in border history." "I think I understand the rest of the story of Mr. Plummer and Miss Morgan," said Harley. "Yes, it is not hard to guess. Mr. Grayson and her other relatives farther East did not hear of her rescue until long afterwards; they supposed her dead--but no one could have cared for her better than Mr. Plummer. He kept her first at his mining-hut in the mountains, but after two or three years he took her into town to Boise; he put her in the care of a woman there and sent her to school. He loved her already like a real daughter. She was just the kind to appeal to him, so brave and so fond of the wild life. They say that at first she refused to stay in Boise. She ran away and tried to go on foot to him away up in the mountains, where the mining-camp was. When he heard of it, they say he laughed, and I suspect that he swore an oath or two--he lived among rough men you know--but if he did, they were swear words of admiration; he said it was just like her independence and pluck. But he made her stay in Boise." "He knew what was right and what was due both him and her, because now he was becoming a great man in the Northwest. He rose to power in both financial and public life, and his daughter must be equal to her fortune. But he spoiled her, you can see that, and how could he help it?"