n little mother!
Nothing else would have kept him from staying to protect Elizabeth.

What a fool he had been! There were questions he might have asked, and
plans they might have made, all those beautiful days and those
moon-silvered nights. If any other man had done the same, he would have
thought him lacking mentally. But here he had maundered on, and never
found out the all-important things about her. Yet how did he know then how
important they were to be? It had seemed as if they had all the world
before them in the brilliant sunlight. How could he know that modern
improvements were to seize him in the midst of a prairie waste, and whirl
him off from her when he had just begun to know what she was, and to prize
her company as a most precious gift dropped down from heaven at his feet?

By degrees he came out of his hysterical frenzy, and returned to a
somewhat normal state of mind. He reasoned himself several times into the
belief that those men were not in the least like the men he had seen
Sunday. He knew that one could not recognize one's own brother at that
distance and that rate of passing speed. He tried to think that Elizabeth
would be cared for. She had come through many a danger, and was it likely
that the God in whom she trusted, who had guarded her so many times in her
great peril, would desert her now in her dire need? Would He not raise up
help for her somewhere? Perhaps another man as good as he, and as
trustworthy as he had tried to be, would find her and help her.

But that thought was not pleasant. He put it away impatiently. It cut him.
Why had she talked so much about the lady? The lady! Ah! How was it the
lady came no more into his thoughts? The memory of her haughty face no
more quickened his heart-beats. Was he fickle that he could lose what he
had supposed was a lifelong passion in a few days?

The darkness was creeping on. Where was Elizabeth? Had she found a refuge
for the night? Or was she wandering on an unknown trail, hearing voices
and oaths through the darkness, and seeing the gleaming of wild eyes low
in the bushes ahead? How could he have left her? How could he? He must go
back even yet. He must, he must, _he must_!

And so it went on through the long night.

The train stopped at several places to take on water; but there seemed to
be no human habitation near, or else his eyes were dim with his trouble.
Once, when they stopped longer than the other times, he got up and walked
the