Elizabeth--that was all he had of her. He did not know the rest of her
name, nor where she was going. He did not even know where she had come
from, just "Elizabeth" and "Montana." If anything happened lo her, he
would never know. Oh! why had he left her? Why had he not _made_ her go
with him? In a case like that a man should assert his authority. But,
then, it was true he had none, and she had said she would run away. She
would have done it too. O, if it had been anything but sickness and
possible death at the other end--and his mother, his own 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