“Father!” I cried as I ran to him. He didn’t seem surprised, someway; he just reached out his arms and held me close. “‘Little daughter,’ he said, ‘I needed you and you came to me; just as your mother came once, when I needed her—but—she couldn’t stay. If only that other Barbara had lived, all this would not have happened.’” Then he bent his head down against mine and a hot tear fell on my cheek. “‘Daddy,’ I said; I hadn’t called him that since I was very little. ‘Daddy, have you been so lonely? why didn’t you send for me sooner?’ “His reply was, ‘I am going West on a very important mission tomorrow, little daughter, so don’t unpack your trunk. I’ll take you with me and you may visit your friends in Arizona.’ “He didn’t tell me what his mission was, but I do know that he bought a ticket for some small town in Texas. He said that he would communicate with me in about a week. Oh, girls,” Babs added with a sob in her voice, “I wish I’d been more loving to my father. I ought to have known that his seeming sternness covered a most lonely heart with mother gone, and his only son wayward, or so daddy supposed.” Margaret was thinking rapidly. “A town in Texas. Tom had been wrongly accused somewhere down there. Could Tom be Peyton after all and had the father received some word that had led him to believe that he would find his boy?” “Bedtime, girls,” Virginia said as she arose. “We may need unusual strength tomorrow.” Megsy sought an early opportunity to be alone with Virginia the next morning and ask her if she thought it possible that Tom might be the missing Peyton, and that the father having received some inkling of the boy’s whereabouts, had come West to search for him. Virginia looked up eagerly. “I hadn’t thought of it, Megsy,” she said, “but now that you suggest it, I do believe that it might be possible. For myself I do not care who Tom may be, all that I want to know is that he is safe and well somewhere, anywhere. Uncle Tex doesn’t tell us what he really thinks, but I know. I have often heard the cow-boys relate tales of rustlers who came upon a lonely herder, and if they wish to spirit away the sheep, they silence the only man who could witness against them.” Then she added, “Babs is calling, dear. We would better not tell her that we think Tom may be her lost brother, Peyton, for how cruel would be the disappointment were we wrong.” The morning hours dragged slowly to the girls who were eagerly awaiting the hoped-for reappearance of little Red Feather. “I am sure Winona will send him back,” Virg said many, many times, but he did not come. In the meantime Lucky had ridden to the Junction to get any mail that might have come on the early morning train, and about noon he returned with several letters for each of the girls. Virg, with an exclamation of eagerness, tore open an envelope addressed in her brother’s familiar handwriting. “Dear little sister,” she read aloud.