won't hear it. I
wouldn't let Grandmother Brady talk about my father, and you can't talk so
about mother. She was my mother, and I loved her, and so did father love
her; and she worked hard to keep him and take care of him when he drank
years and years, and didn't have any money to help her. Mother was only
eighteen when she married father, and you ought not to blame her. She
didn't have a nice home like this. But she was good and dear, and now she
is dead. Father and mother are both dead, and all the other children. A
man killed my brother, and then as soon as he was buried he came and
wanted me to go with him. He was an awful man, and I was afraid, and took
my brother's horse and ran away. I rode all this long way because I was
afraid of that man, and I wanted to get to some of my own folks, who would
love me, and let me work for them, and let me go to school and learn
something. But I wish now I had stayed out there and died. I could have
lain down in the sage-brush, and a wild beast would have killed me
perhaps, and that would be a great deal better than this; for Grandmother
Brady does not understand, and you do not want me; but in my Father's
house in heaven there are many mansions, and He went to prepare a place
for me; so I guess I will go back to the desert, and perhaps He will send
for me. Good-by, grandmother."

Then before the astonished woman in the bed could recover her senses from
this remarkable speech Elizabeth turned and walked majestically from the
room. She was slight and not very tall, but in the strength of her pride
and purity she looked almost majestic to the awestruck maid and the
bewildered woman.

* * * * *

Down the stairs walked the girl, feeling that all the wide world was
against her. She would never again try to get a friend. She had not met a
friend except in the desert. One man had been good to her, and she had let
him go away; but he belonged to another woman, and she might not let him
stay. There was just one thing to be thankful for. She had knowledge of
her Father in heaven, and she knew what Christian Endeavor meant. She
could take that with her out into the desert, and no one could take it
from her. One wish she had, but maybe that was too much to hope for. If
she could have had a Bible of her own! She had no money left. Nothing but
her mother's wedding-ring, the papers, and the envelope that had contained
the money the man had given her when he l