He slunk into the house, cowed and shamed. The sight of the dogs,
huddled about the door inside, gave him a guilty start, and he drove
them angrily out. Then he got himself to bed in the dark. He lay there
in the dark, wondering foolishly what Jacob Stanwood would say if he
knew what had happened; till, suddenly, he became aware that his mind
was wandering, upon which he laughed harshly. Elizabeth heard the laugh,
and a vague fear seized upon her. She got up and listened at her door,
but the noise was not repeated. Perhaps it was a coyote outside; they
sometimes made strange noises.

She went to the window and drew back the Persian altar-cloth. The wind
came from the other side of the house; she had been too preoccupied to
notice it before. Now it shook the house rudely, and then went howling
and roaring across the plains. It was strange to hear it and to feel its
force, and yet to see no evidence of it: not a tree to wave its
branches, not a cloud to scurry through the sky; only the vast level
prairie and the immovable hills, and up above them a sky, liquid and
serene, with steady stars shining in its depths, all unconcerned with
the raving wind. She felt comforted and strengthened, and when she went
back to bed she rested in the sense of comfort. But she did not sleep.

She was hardly aware that she was not sleeping, as the hours passed
unmarked, until, in a sudden lull of the wind, a voice struck her ear; a
voice speaking rapidly and eagerly. She sprang to her feet. The voice
came from her father's room. Had some one lost his way in the night, and
had her father taken him in? It did not sound like a conversation; it
was monotonous, unvarying, unnatural. She hastily threw on a
dressing-gown, and crept to her father's door. She recognized his voice
now, but the words were incoherent. He was ill, he was delirious. There
was no light within. She opened the door and whispered "Papa," but he
did not hear her. In a moment she had lighted a lamp; another moment,
and she stood beside him. He was sitting straight up in his bed, talking
and gesticulating violently; his eyes glittered in the lamp-light, his
face showed haggard and intense.

Elizabeth placed the lamp upon a stand close at hand.

"Papa," she said, "don't you know me? I'm Elizabeth."

He caught at the name.

"You lie!" he cried shrilly. "Elizabeth's dead! I won't have her talked
about! She's dead, I say! Hush-sh! Hush-sh! Don't wake her up. Sleep's a
good thi