Glover thanked her, but appeared absorbed in Mrs. Whitney's attempt to disengage her eye-glasses from their holder, and Gertrude made no further effort to break his restraint. Mrs. Whitney talked, and Glover talked, but Gertrude reserved her bolt until just before their train started. He had gone with them, and they were standing on the platform before the vestibule steps of their Pullman car. As the last moment approached it was not hard to see that Glover was torn between Mrs. Whitney's rapid-fire talk and a desire to hear something from Gertrude. She waited till the train was moving before she loosed her shaft. Mrs. Whitney had ascended the steps, the porter was impatient, Glover nervous. Gertrude turned with a smile and a totally bewildering cordiality on the unfortunate man. "My sister," her glove was on the hand-rail, "sends some sort of a message to Mr. Glover every time I come to Medicine Bend--but the gist of them all is that she would be very"--the train was moving and they were stepping along with it--"glad to see you at Glen Tarn before----" "Gertrude," screamed Mrs. Whitney, "will you get on?" Glover's eyes were growing like target-lights. "--before we go East," continued Gertrude. "So should I," she added, throwing in the last three words most inexplicably, as she kept step with the engineer. But she had not miscalculated the effect. "Are you to go soon?" he exclaimed. The porter followed them helplessly with his stool. Mrs. Whitney wrung her hands, and Gertrude attempted to reach the lower tread of the car step. Someone very decidedly helped her, and she laughed and rose from his hands as lightly as to a stirrup. When she collected herself, after the pleasure of the spring, Mrs. Whitney was scolding her for her carelessness; but she was waving a glove from the vestibule at a big hat still lifted in the dusk of the platform. CHAPTER XIV GLEN TARN October had not yet gone when they met again in a Medicine Bend street. Glover, leaving the Wickiup with Morris Blood, ran into Gertrude Brock coming out of an Indian curio-shop with Doctor Lanning. She began at once to talk to Glover. "Marie was regretting, yesterday, that you had not yet found your way to Glen Tarn." The sun beat intensely on her black hat and her suit of gray. In her gloved hand she twirled the tip of her open sunshade on the pavement with deliberation and he shifted his footing helplessly. His heavy face never looked homelier than in sunshine, and she gazed at him with a calmness that was staggering. He muttered something about having been unusually busy. "We, too, have been," smiled Gertrude, "making final preparations for our departure." "Do you go so soon?" he exclaimed. "We are waiting only papa's return now to say good-by to the mountains." The way in which she put it stirred him as she had intended it should--uncomfortably.