BENSON was not mistaken. He had achieved a permanent place in Virginia Landray's regard. She had definitely accepted him, and in the exact degree in which he had wished he might be accepted. She came to rely on him as she relied on no one else; his words, his opinions, always on the one momentous subject of Stephen's return, had weight with her. He took her such maps as he could find, and together they followed the course of the gold-seekers. He dilated upon the possible obstacles and difficulties they had encountered, while making light of the dangers. Whatever could account for their silence he dwelt upon and exaggerated; and this in spite of his own growing conviction that Stephen Landray and his companions had gone to their death in that rush across the plains.

“What if she never hears from him?” he asked himself this over and over, not coldly and without calculation, but as one who might be brought face to face with an altered condition.

Virginia was young and beautiful; there would be no dearth of suitors if she were widowed. Yet, could she be made to realize, that for her, Stephen Landray and Stephen Landray's love had ceased to be, in all but memory? There was something horrible and unnatural in the thought that for her, life might cease to have any special meaning beyond passive endurance. If she had been less beautiful; less radiantly youthful; if a casual if compassionate interest had been possible where she was concerned; he might have found something in the nature of compensation in this conception of his as to what her devotion would be; now he saw it only as an unmitigated tragedy. Yet he ended by glorifying her for those very qualities that made him despair most.

He contrasted her with Anna, for whom he was feeling nothing but contempt; a contempt, however, that was not unmixed with pity, for he realized the impermanency of her emotions; she had adjusted herself to a cheerful acceptance of the situation; they would hear from their adventurers in the spring; it was folly to expect letters now that winter had set in, and she was not going to mope.

Benson was constantly irritated by her requests for money; and when he finally refused to yield to them out of simple justice to Virginia, whose interests he felt were threatened by her extravagance, she quietly worsted him by gaining Virginia's sanction to her demands.

It was in vain that he remonstrated with the latter. She listened patiently enough to his explanation, but with an apathy that included all worldly concerns.

He was exasperated and annoyed, since the situation promised to present certain very tangible difficulties. The mill had been a dubious enterprise in the hands of Paxon, the new man. In January he was to have made his second payment, but was unable to do so, and turned back the mill. The brothers had directed that this money be used to take up their note to Mr. Stark; and Benson took up the note himself.

He showed the note to Anna the very next time she came to the office, hoping it would prove an impressive argument in favour of greater economy; but was much chagrined to find that she regarded the matter as settled, now that the note had passed out of Mr. Stark's hands into his.

“But, my dear Mrs. Landray,” he urged, “suppose anything should happen; suppose I should die suddenly; the note would be found among my papers—it might be very inconvenient, you know.”

“But you are not going to die, Mr. Benson,” said Anna cheerfully. “I have just been remarking how well you look,” and she rose reluctantly to go.

“We never know,” said the lawyer, rising with evident alacrity. He followed her to the door. Anna sighed and frowned.

“If only Bush were here, I shouldn't have to bother you; I can manage Bush, but I don't seem able to do so very much with you, Mr. Benson. I wonder why it is?” she turned to him smilingly.

“I am fortified by the necessities of the case,” he said.

“You are a very determined character; I don't wonder people have such confidence in you,” she hoped this flattery might move him, but the lawyer merely bowed. “Can't we mortgage something? Bush and Stephen were always doing that.”

“They were almost too successful, Mrs. Landray,” said Benson.

“Well, I shall see Virginia,” and Anna sighed again.

“I shall see Virginia, too,” muttered the lawyer, after Anna had taken her leave of him. “The little idiot cares for nothing but money!” and he turned back into his office again.

The house Benson occupied was on the north side of the public square. It was a two story frame structure having an ungenerous porch across the front. Everything about it spoke for a depressing utility, a meagre sufficiency. Its walls were mere husks which enclosed large barren rooms, which successfully resisted all attempts at adornment. A narrow strip of turf separated the house from the sidewalk, this was divided by a gravel walk which led from the gate to the front door; the edges of this path were bordered by whitewashed stones the size of a man's two fists.

Since his father's death, Benson had used the large double parlours as offices; a side door from the rear room, over which his modest sign was displayed, opened on Water Street; and by this door his clients came and went in steadily increasing numbers.

He had few pleasant memories of his boyhood to attach him to the place. His mother had died when he was a child; and his father, who had his own ideas about the rearing of children, had made his up-bringing stern and rigorous; he yet recalled the latter with greater awe than affection; indeed, a certain fear of the old pioneer had followed him into manhood.

He still remembered vividly his first trial; how glancing up from his brief, he had found his father's dark restless eyes fixed upon him; their coldly critical glance had filled him with something very like terror; and when he had spoken his voice faltered, and he had seen the shaven lips curl contemptuously; afterward, his father had said with that frank unsparing candour of his, “I suppose you can't help it that you are a fool, Jacob;” then he had added, “I always thought you took after your mother's folks; none of them ever amounted to much that I heard tell of.” But he had lived to reconsider this hasty judgment; he had seen his son grow steadily in men's esteem.

Old Jacob Benson had been a very rich man, his opportunities considered. The big brick warehouses on Front Street had been his, and for years he had been the principal merchant in the town.

On coming into this property, young Jacob had disposed of the store; and he was content to collect his rents from the warehouses without any speculative interest in the grain and produce they housed. He was studious and ambitious. He might have done many things with the fortune that was his, but he had preferred to remain in Benson where the very men who had distrusted his father, the men who had reason to remember him as hard and close, Had every liking for the son.

When Anna took her leave of him, the lawyer turned to his desk. He had scarcely settled himself at his work again, when a carriage drew up at the curb. Sam West was on the box, and Benson hurried into the street and was just in time to open the carriage door for Virginia.

“I have wanted to see you for several days, Mr. Benson,” she said.

“Is anything wrong? What can I do?” He had led the way into the office; now he found a chair for her.

“There is something you can do,” said Virginia, seating herself.

“What, Mrs. Landray?”

She put out her gloved hand and rested it lightly on his arm.

“It's the one thing,” she said, smiling sadly. “I want your advice now; for later I shall want your help. It will soon be spring again, the Ohio will be open, the ice gone—”

“Yes, it can't be long now until you hear,” he prompted encouragingly. .

“But I am not going to wait to hear,” she said slowly.

“Not going to wait to hear?” he repeated, vaguely disquieted by her words and manner.

“No. I am going West to find Stephen.”

“Impossible, Mrs. Landray!” he burst out; but she checked him by a gesture, a gesture that imposed silence while it banished his objections as trivial.

“I have waited. I can wait no longer. I must know.” Her look had become one of settled determination.

“But, Mrs. Landray, pray hear me—”

“I know you will wish to dissuade me; so will Anna, and Jane, and what you will say will be prompted only by kindness; but it will be of no use, Mr. Benson. Don't you understand I shall never be satisfied unless this is done? I must hear again—even if the message is from the dead.” Her voice faltered, but she went bravely on after an instant's silence. “It is quite useless to reason with me; for this is not a matter that can be reached by reason.”

There was a long pause. Benson saw that while she was in her present mood there was nothing he could say in opposition to this plan of hers that would have any weight with her.

“I know Anna and Jane will think it foolish, so I came here to win you to my purpose first.”

“I fear you can't do that, Mrs. Landray,” and he smiled doubtfully.

“It will be possible to find the money, will it not?” And Benson regretted that Anna's extravagance had made it necessary for him to exaggerate the difficulties of raising money. He felt a sudden guilty pang that he had imposed this further burden on Virginia; he hastened to reassure her.

“I did not mean in that way,” he said.

“How, then, Mr. Benson? No—I want you to say just what you think. If you are to help me with the others you must think and believe with me.”

“But you cannot go alone, Mrs. Landray.”

She smiled superior. She was already prepared for this objection.

“No, of course not. I shall join some party. Other women have gone. In the spring other women will be going again; I will join some such party.”

He seated himself in a chair at her side.

“I know you will listen to me, even if you had rather not hear what I am going to say; but have you really considered the difficulties, the hardships, the actual dangers?” he asked.

“They are nothing, compared with what I am suffering now,” she said simply. He hurried on.

“If you will only wait, you may hear from him. Indeed you must make up your mind to wait until the river opens; you cannot start until then. I beg of you wait just a little longer; pray don't misunderstand me, I am not going to oppose any project you may have set your heart upon; that would be quite without my province.”

“Then you really think I should go—”

“No, Mrs. Landray, I can scarcely conceive—you will pardon me for saying it—a more ill-advised undertaking; but I think you will see it this way, too, when I have pointed out some of the difficulties.”

Virginia's face fell.

“I will do anything to help you,” he went on warmly. “But how can your quest prove conclusive? You will be a member of some party whose whole interest will be to cross the plains as quickly as possible. They will not want to stop to prosecute such a search; and do you realize the magnitude of such a task? You will have to cross hundreds of miles of desert, and explore a region that will some day be divided into seven or eight States larger than Ohio.”

“Men can be hired to go where I can not,” said Virginia reluctantly. Then she drew herself up imperiously, “I have thought of all you say, Mr. Benson, and in spite of obstacles the means of success will not be lacking, I am sure of that.”

There was a long silence. Benson rose and paced the floor. Virginia watched him gravely.

“It will be possible for you to raise sufficient money?” she asked at last. “I shall need a large sum.”

“I beg your pardon—oh, yes,” when she had repeated her question. Benson paused in his rapid walk.

“I suppose you know how absolutely helpless you will be,” he said. “How dependent on mere chance kindness, on mercenary interest, Mrs. Landray? I appreciate your heroism—it is beautiful—believe me I am not unmindful of that; but it is altogether impractical. If any one goes, a man must go. A man who will be superior to chance kindness or purchased interest, who can conduct the search himself from beginning to end, and who will not have to trust any one.”

“But where could I find such a man?”

The lawyer's face flushed.

“Would you trust me, Mrs. Landray?”

“You—Mr. Benson?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” rising and going quickly to his side. “You are not serious, you could not go; so many people need you here!”

“They can very well get along without me,” he said shortly.

She searched his face eagerly; there was a faint wistful smile on her lips. It was plain she was uncertain as to how she might take his words.

“I am quite in earnest, Mrs. Landray,” he said. “You could trust me.”

“Oh, yes—implicitly.”

A swift sense of joy came to him. He was about to do a very foolish thing; but the fact that it would be for her, dignified the folly; it became desirable, a privilege.

“But can you go?” doubtfully.

“Why not?” and he laughed boyishly. “What's to keep me if I wish to go? However, you must understand that I am making a promise that future events will probably render void; so you need not thank me, since I can't think I'll have the opportunity to earn your thanks.”

“But I do thank you!”

“And you agree to my going if it's necessary?” he questioned eagerly.

She looked at him doubtingly.

“I wonder when you speak so confidently of my hearing from Stephen in the spring, how much is conviction, how much kindness—the wish to put from me till the last moment a terrible, hopeless knowledge?”

His glance wavered under the intensity of the look she fixed upon him; he could not meet her eyes.

“I know you mean to be very kind, Mr. Benson. Your friendship has been my greatest comfort, and now you will make this sacrifice; I fear I am very selfish in allowing it, but don't you understand? This is the last, the only thing I can do; after this, there is nothing—nothing—everything will have ended for me; and so, in my extremity, I am willing to let you go for me.”

“Don't say that, Mrs. Landray!” he cried. “Nothing really ends; in some form or another the thing we cherish lives on.”

“But what will be left for me?” she asked simply; and he was silent.

It was all so recent, but later when time should have done its merciful work, some peace of mind would surely come to her; he could not believe that this tragedy could be wholly tragic.

“When I go,” he said gently, “I shall want you to believe that I shall leave nothing undone that devotion and singleness of purpose can suggest, or money accomplish. But we must wait a little longer; you will be patient, Mrs. Landray?”

“Haven't I been patient?” and she raised her sad eyes to his. “I only wonder how I have lived through the winter. Can you conceive anything more awful—some one you love, who is all in all to you; and for that person to take his living, breathing presence out of your life, and never to hear, never to know, only to wonder; to go on from fear to fear—”

“Yes,” he cried generously. “God knows, you have been patient, Mrs. Landray; but I only ask you to wait until we shall have had time to hear; until the river and western travel opens. Then if you do not hear from him, I will start at once. We will end this suspense. The more I think of it, the more it seems the reasonable thing to do.”

And now that he was determined to make this journey for her, he glowed with a generous enthusiasm. If Stephen Landray still lived he would bring to her the tidings, and would find it in his heart to rejoice with her.

“But I wonder if it is right of me to allow you to do this,” and her face was troubled. “Perhaps my first idea, to go myself, was best.”

“No, Mrs. Landray, you will wait here until I bring you word of him. Your idea was beautiful and devoted, but the very fact that you are a woman would stand in your way. So if any one goes, I must go. You can trust to my devotion, my friendship, where you could not trust another whose interest you had merely purchased. I shall go single hearted to find him; that will be my sole purpose.”

He felt exalted by the sacrifice to which he was committed. He wished it might be greater; then it would be the more worthy of her.

“I can only think of him as ill, with some terrible illness, or—or—” and speech failed her.

“I know,” he said softly.

“I wish you could know all you have been to me; the comfort you have given. I don't mean now, I mean since that night when you brought me the letter.” She rose as she spoke and gathered her wraps about her.

“It is nothing—nothing,” he assured her, as he walked with her to her carriage.

“I will be patient,” she said as she bade him good-bye. “And though you will not hear of it, I am aware of the sacrifice you will be making for his sake.”

“For his sake,” repeated Benson slowly, as the carriage rolled away; and he turned back in the twilight that had fallen, and reentered the house.