"Well, it's pretty near forever when you are in love," declared Dicksie energetically. "I know just how he felt," she went on in a quieter tone. "He felt that all the disagreeable excitement and talk we had here then bore heaviest on you. He said if he stayed in Medicine Bend the newspapers never would cease talking and people never would stop annoying you--and you know George did say they were asking to have passenger trains held here just so people could see Whispering Smith. And, Marion, think of it, he actually doesn't know yet that George and I are married! How could we notify him without knowing where he was? And he doesn't know that trains are running up the Crawling Stone Valley. Mercy! a year goes like an hour when you're in love, doesn't it? George said he _knew_ we should hear from him within six months--and George has never yet been mistaken excepting when he said I should grow to like the railroad business--and now it is a year and no news from him." Dicksie sprang from her chair. "I am going to call up Mr. Rooney Lee and just demand my husband! I think Mr. Lee handles trains shockingly every time George tries to get home like this on Saturday nights--now don't you? And passenger trains ought to get out of the way, anyway, when a division superintendent is trying to get home. What difference does it make to a passenger, I'd like to know, whether he is a few hours less or longer in getting to California or Japan or Manila or Hongkong or Buzzard's Gulch, provided he is safe--and you know there has not been an accident on the division for a year, Marion. There's a step now. I'll bet that's George!" The door opened and it was George. "Oh, honey!" cried Dicksie softly, waving her arms as she stood an instant before she ran to him. "But haven't I been a-waitin' for you!" "Too bad! and, Marion," he exclaimed, turning without releasing his wife from his arms, "how can I ever make good for all this delay? Oh, yes, I've had dinner. Never, for Heaven's sake, wait dinner for me! But wait, both of you, till you hear the news!" Dicksie kept her hands on his shoulders. "You have heard from Whispering Smith!" "I have." "I knew it!" "Wait till I get it straight. Mr. Bucks is here--I came in with him in his car. He has news of Whispering Smith. One of our freight-traffic men in the Puget Sound country, who has been in a hospital in Victoria, learned by the merest accident that Gordon Smith was lying in the same hospital with typhoid fever." Marion rose swiftly. "Then the time has come, thank God, when I can do something for him; and I am going to him to-night!" "Fine!" cried McCloud. "So am I, and that is why I'm late." "Then I am going, too," exclaimed Dicksie solemnly.