d with many an
injunction from the admiring and envious neighbours who came to see them
off, Amelia Ellen bade a sobbing good-bye to her solemn lover in the
gray dawn of an October morning, climbed into the stage beside Hazel,
and they drove away into the mystery of the great world. As she looked
back at her Peter, standing patient, stooped and gray in the familiar
village street, looking after his departing sweetheart who was going out
sightseeing into the world, Amelia Ellen would almost have jumped out
over the wheel and run back if it had not been for what the neighbours
would say, for her heart was Burley's; and now that the big trees were
actually pulling harder than Burley, and she had decided to go and see
them, Burley began by his very acquiescence to pull harder than the big
trees. It was a very teary Amelia Ellen who climbed into the train a few
hours later, looking back dismally, hopelessly, towards the old stage
they had just left, and wondering after all if she ever would get back
to Granville safe and alive again. Strange fears visited her of dangers
that might come to Burley during her absence, which if they did she
would never forgive herself for having left him; strange horrors of the
way of things that might hinder her return; and she began to regard her
hitherto beloved travelling companion with almost suspicion, as if she
were a conspirator against her welfare.

However, as the miles grew and the wonders of the way multiplied, Amelia
Ellen began to sit up and take notice, and to have a sort of excited
exultance that she had come; for were they not nearing the great famed
West now, and would it not soon be time to see the big trees and turn
back home again? She was almost glad she had come. She would be wholly
glad she had done so when she had got back safely home once more.

And so one evening about sunset they arrived at the little station in
Arizona which over a year ago Hazel had left in her father's private
car.

XIV

HOME

Amelia Ellen, stiff from the unaccustomed travel, powdered with the dust
of the desert, wearied with the excitement of travel and lack of sleep
amid her strange surroundings, stepped down upon the wooden platform and
surveyed the magnificent distance between herself and anywhere; observed
the vast emptiness, with awful purpling mountains and limitless
stretches of vari-coloured ground arched by a dome of sky, higher and
wider and more dazzling than her stern New