The anger died out of Arthur's heart, and the warm blood rushed once more through his tingling body. Tears came to his eyes, and he could have embraced his defender. "Nothing like consistency, Majah," said Saulisbury. "Sam, will you be quiet?" The Major went on: "I imagine the whole matter is for Edith to decide. It's really very simple. Let her send word to him that she does not care to see him, and he'll go away--no doubt of it." "Why, of course," said Mrs. Thayer. "Edith, just tell Mary to say to Mr. What's-his-name----" Again that creeping thrill came into the young man's hair. His world seemed balanced on a needle's point. Then a chair was pushed back slowly. There was another little flurry. Again the blood poured over him like a splash of warm water, leaving him cold and wet. "Edith!" called the astonished, startled voice of Mrs. Thayer. "What are you going to do?" "I'm going to see him," said the girl's firm voice. There was a soft clapping of two pairs of hands. As she came through the portière, Edith walked like a princess. There was amazing resolution in her back-flung head, and on her face was the look of one who sets sail into unknown seas. Someway--somehow, through a mist of light and a blur of sound, he met her--and the cling of her arms about his neck moved him to tears. No word was uttered till the Major called from the doorway: "Mr. Ramsey, Mrs. Thayer wants to know if you won't come and have some dinner." A STOP-OVER AT TYRE. I. Albert Lohr was studying the motion of the ropes and lamps, and listening to the rumble of the wheels and the roar of the ferocious wind against the pane of glass that his head touched. It was the midnight train from Marion rushing toward Warsaw like some savage thing unchained, creaking, shrieking, and clattering through the wild storm which possessed the whole Mississippi Valley. Albert lost sight of the lamps at last, and began to wonder what his future would be. "First I must go through the university at Madison; then I'll study law, go into politics, and perhaps some time I may go to Washington." In imagination he saw that wonderful city. As a Western boy, Boston to him was historic, New York was the great metropolis, but Washington was the great American city, and political greatness the only fame. The car was nearly empty: save here and there the wide-awake Western drummer, and a woman with four fretful children, the train was as deserted as it was frightfully cold. The engine shrieked warningly at intervals, the train rumbled hollowly over short bridges and across pikes, swung round the hills, and plunged with wild warnings past little towns hid in the snow, with only here and there a light shining dimly. One of the drummers now and then rose up from his cramped bed on the seats, and swore dreadfully at the railway company for not heating the cars. The woman with the children inquired for the tenth time, "Is the next station Lodi?"