The snow was falling thickly; it blurred his tracks behind him; the crest of a drift was caught up and carried, swirling, into the railroad cut he had left, and a great gust tore into the office with him.  The solitary operator hurried to close the door and, shivering, stooped to put a huge stick of wood in the stove.  “It’s too bad,” he said.  “Forgot the main point, I suppose.  If this keeps up, and your train moves to-morrow, it will be through a regular snow canyon.  I just got word your head rotary is out of commission, but another is coming up from the east with a gang of shovellers.  They’ll stop here for water.  It’s a chance for you to ride back to your train.”

“Thank you, I will wait,” Tisdale answered genially.  “But I like walking in this mountain air.  I like it so well that if the blockade doesn’t lift by to-morrow, I am going to mush through and pick up a special to the coast.”

While he spoke, he brushed the snow from his shoulders and took off his hat and gloves.  He stood another moment, rubbing and pinching his numb hands, then went over to the desk and filled a telegraph blank.  He laid down the exact amount of the charges in silver, to which he added five dollars in gold.

The operator went around the counter and picked up the money.  For an instant his glance, moving from the message, rested on Tisdale’s face in curious surprise.  This man surely enjoyed the mountain air.  He had tramped back in the teeth of a growing blizzard to send an order for violets to Hollywood Gardens, Seattle.  The flowers were to be expressed to a lady at Scenic Hot Springs.

After that Tisdale spent an interval moving restlessly about the room.  He read the advertisements on the walls, studied the map of the Great Northern route, and when the stove grew red-hot, threw open the door and tramped the platform in the piping wind.  Finally, when the keyboard was quiet, the operator brought him a magazine.  The station did not keep a news-stand, but a conductor on the westbound had left this for him to read.  There was a mighty good yarn—­this was it—­“The Tenas Papoose.”  It was just the kind when a man was trying to kill time.

Tisdale took the periodical.  No, he had not seen it aboard the train; there were so many of these new magazines, it was hard to choose.  He smiled at first, that editor’s note was so preposterous, so plainly sensational; or was it malicious?  He re-read it, knitting his brows.  Who was this writer Daniels?  His mind ran back to that day aboard the Aquila.  Aside from the Morgansteins and Mrs. Weatherbee, there had been no one else in the party until the lieutenant was picked up at Bremerton, after the adventure was told.  But Daniels—­he glanced back to be sure of the author’s name—­James Daniels.  Now he remembered.  That was the irrepressible young fellow who had secured the photographs in Snoqualmie Pass at the time of the accident to the Morganstein automobile; who had later interviewed Mrs. Weatherbee on the train.  Had he then sought her at her hotel, ostensibly to present her with a copy of the newspaper in which those illustrations were published, and so ingratiated himself far enough in her favor to gather another story from her?