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“Just what they’re doing now! By thunder!” interrupted another passenger, who was looking through the rolled-up curtain at his side.

All the passengers turned by one accord and looked out. The file of Chinamen under observation had indeed turned, and was even then moving rapidly away at right angles from the road.

“Got some signal, you bet!” said the driver; “some yeller paper or piece o’ joss stick in the road. What?”

The remark was addressed to the passenger who had just placed his finger on his lip, and indicated a stolid-looking Chinaman, overlooked before, who was sitting in the back or “steerage” seat.

“Oh, he be darned!” said the driver impatiently. “HE is no account; he’s only the laundryman from Rocky Canyon. I’m talkin’ of the coolie gang.”

But here the conversation flagged, and the air growing keener, the flaps of the leather side curtains were battened down. Masterton gave himself up to conflicting reflections. The information that he had gathered was meagre and unsatisfactory, and he could only trust to luck and circumstance to fulfill his mission. The first glow of adventure having passed, he was uneasily conscious that the mission was not to his taste. The pretty, flushed but defiant face of Cissy that afternoon haunted him; he had not known the immediate cause of it, but made no doubt that she had already heard the news of her father’s disgrace when he met her. He regretted now that he hadn’t spoken to her, if only a few formal words of sympathy. He had always been half tenderly amused at her frank conceit and her “airs,”–the innocent, undisguised pride of the country belle, so different from the hard aplomb of the city girl! And now the foolish little moth, dancing in the sunshine of prosperity, had felt the chill of winter in its pretty wings. The contempt he had for the father had hitherto shown itself in tolerant pity for the daughter, so proud of her father’s position and what it brought her. In the revelation that his own directors had availed themselves of that father’s methods, and the ignoble character of his present mission, he felt a stirring of self-reproach. What would become of her? Of course, frivolous as she was, she would not feel the keenness of this misfortune like another, nor yet rise superior to it. She would succumb for the present, to revive another season in a dimmer glory elsewhere. His critical, cynical observation of her had determined that any filial affection she might have would be merged and lost in the greater deprivation of her position.

A sudden darkening of the landscape below, and a singular opaque whitening of the air around them, aroused him from his thoughts. The driver drew up the collar of his overcoat and laid his whip smartly over the backs of his cattle. The air grew gradually darker, until suddenly it seemed to disintegrate into invisible gritty particles that swept through the wagon. Presently these particles became heavier, more perceptible, and polished like small shot, and a keen wind drove them stingingly into the faces of the passengers, or insidiously into their pockets, collars, or the folds of their clothes. The snow forced itself through the smallest crevice.

“We’ll get over this when once we’ve passed the bend; the road seems to dip beyond,” said Masterton cheerfully from his seat beside the driver.

The driver gave him a single scornful look, and turned to the passenger who occupied the seat on the other side of him. “I don’t like the look o’ things down there, but ef we are stuck, we’ll have to strike out for the next station.”

“But,” said Masterton, as the wind volleyed the sharp snow pellets in their faces and the leaders were scarcely distinguishable through the smoke-like discharges, “it can’t be worse than here.”

The driver did not speak, but the other passenger craned over his back, and said explanatorily:–

“I reckon ye don’t know these storms; this kind o’ dry snow don’t stick and don’t clog. Look!”