Part 32 (1/2)

”By Jove, Harry! What are you doing here?” cries this young gentleman, who has become very familiar with the man who has saved his life.

”Hunting for you,” replies Lawrence, returning Ferdie's warm grip very cordially.

”Ah, you've come to tell us the news, I suppose,” laughs Mr. Chauncey.

Then he amazes Lawrence with the query: ”How is she?”

”Who?”

”Erma Travenion, of course--how is she getting along with her many step-mammas?”

”What do you mean?” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es Harry, thinking Mr. Chauncey has gone daft.

”I mean what I say. Innocence won't do. Has old Tranyon given you his mine as well as his daughter? Ollie and his mother quarrel every day over his desertion of the heiress. The widow says that she and Louise won't be able to live on their income now, and Oliver has turned sullen, and says if they can't, Louise can go into a Protestant nunnery. So that young lady is in despair.”

”What the d.i.c.kens do you mean?” gasps Harry. Then he says: ”Are you crazy?” and looking into Ferdie's face, and seeing sanity there, suddenly seizes him, leads him apart, and commands: ”Tell me what you're driving at!”

Then Mr. Chauncey, guessing from Lawrence's manner that he does not know what has happened, tells him what took place in Salt Lake the evening before their departure, to which Harry listens with staring eyes.

As Ferdie closes, he suddenly breaks out: ”Now I understand!--Tranyon's deed to me--it was that angel's doing!” Then mutters: ”My G.o.d! She'll think me a monster of ingrat.i.tude! A prig, like that scalliwag up-stairs;” he turns up his thumb towards where Mr. Livingston is supposed to be.

To this Mr. Chauncey says nothing, though his eyes have grown very large.

After a second's thought, Lawrence continues very earnestly: ”You say I saved your life. May I ask you a favor in return?”

”Anything!” cries Ferdie.

”Very well! You can explain this matter to Erma Travenion, so that she will know that I followed her for love, all over California, and did not desert her for pride, because she was the daughter of a Mormon, in Utah.

Will you come with me, and make that explanation?”

”Yes--when?”

”Now! The train leaves in an hour.”

”I will,” cries Ferdie. ”I only want fifteen minutes to pack my trunk and explain my sudden departure to the Livingstons.”

Which he does, and the two make their exit from San Francisco on the afternoon train, and two days afterwards find themselves in Salt Lake City, where Ferdinand would like to lay over for a night, but Lawrence says, ”No rest while she thinks me ungrateful!”

Despite some demur on the part of Mr. Chauncey, he puts him into a light wagon, and the two drive all night so as to make Eureka in the morning, which they do, some two hours after Mr. Kruger has left it.

At the hotel, seeing neither Tranyon nor his daughter, Lawrence drags Ferdie, who is very tired, with him up the trail to the office of Zion's Co-operative Mine, and says: ”You go in, my young diplomat, and tell her; I'll wait down here out of the way.”

Which he does; but a few minutes after Chauncey comes back and reports: ”There's no one there!”

”n.o.body?”

”Not a living soul!”

Lawrence investigating this and finding it true, they return to the hotel again; but to Harry's anxious inquiries, no one can give him any information of the whereabouts this day of Bishop Tranyon or his daughter till, after two hours' search, some one suggests: ”They may be up at the mine.”

”They're not working that now?” says Harry.