late.




CHAPTER II.

"YOU MUST NOT MARRY HIM--HEAVEN INTENDED YOU FOR ME."


Slowly but surely the sturdy engine struggled on through the huge
snowdrifts, reaching Beechwood a little after seven, over an hour and a
half behind time.

Lester Armstrong swung himself off the rear platform into fully five
feet of snow, floundering helplessly about for an instant, while the
train plunged onward, and at last struck the path that led up over the
hills in the village beyond.

Beechwood consisted of but a few elegant homes owned and occupied by
retired New Yorkers of wealth. Horace Fairfax was perhaps the most
influential, as well as the wealthiest of these; his magnificent home on
the brow of the farthest hill was certainly the most imposing and
pretentious.

Lester Armstrong's heart gave a great bound as he came within sight of
it, standing like a great castle, with its peaks and gables, and windows
all blazing with light and the red glow of inward warmth against its
dark background of fir trees more than a century old, and the white
wilderness of snow stretching out and losing itself in the darkness