It was the old Cissy that stepped into the room, dressed as she was when she left her father’s house two days before.  Oddly enough, he fancied that something of her old conscious manner had returned with her clothes, and as he stepped with her into the back seat of the covered sleigh in waiting, he could not help saying, “I really think I understand you better in your other clothes.”

A slight blush mounted to Cissy’s cheek, but her eyes were still audacious.  “All the same, I don’t think you’d like to walk down Main Street with me in that rig, although you once thought nothing of taking me over your old mill in your blue blouse and overalls.”  And having apparently greatly relieved her proud little heart by this enigmatic statement, she grew so chatty and confidential that the young man was satisfied that he had been in love with her from the first!

When they reached the station, Trixit drew him aside.  Taking an envelope marked “Private Contracts” from his pocket, he opened it and displayed some papers.  “These are the securities.  Tell your directors that you have seen them safe in my hands, and that no one else has seen them.  Tell them that if they will send me their renewed notes, dated from to-day, to Sacramento within the next three days, I will return the securities.  That is my message.”

The young man bowed.  But before the coach started he managed to draw near to Cissy.  “You are not returning to Canada City,” he said.

The young girl made a gesture of indignation.  “No!  I am never going there again.  I go with my popper to Sacramento.”

“Then I suppose I must say ‘good-by.’”

The girl looked at him in surprise.  “Popper says you are coming to Sacramento in three days!”

“Am I?”

He looked at her fixedly.  She returned his glance audaciously, steadfastly.

“You are,” she said, in her low but distinct voice.

“I will.”

And he did.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FONDA

PART I

“Well!” said the editor of the “Mountain Clarion,” looking up impatiently from his copy.  “What’s the matter now?”

The intruder in his sanctum was his foreman.  He was also acting as pressman, as might be seen from his shirt-sleeves spattered with ink, rolled up over the arm that had just been working “the Archimedian lever that moves the world,” which was the editor’s favorite allusion to the hand-press that strict economy obliged the “Clarion” to use.  His braces, slipped from his shoulders during his work, were looped negligently on either side, their functions being replaced by one hand, which occasionally hitched up his trousers to a securer position.  A pair of down-at-heel slippers—­dear to the country printer—­completed his negligee.

But the editor knew that the ink-spattered arm was sinewy and ready, that a stout and loyal heart beat under the soiled shirt, and that the slipshod slippers did not prevent its owner’s foot from being “put down” very firmly on occasion.  He accordingly met the shrewd, good-humored blue eyes of his faithful henchman with an interrogating smile.