too, she might have wandered in a wrong direction, imagining any road
to lead to Patesville. It would be a good plan to drive back home,
continuing his inquiries meantime, and ascertain whether or not she had
been found by those who were seeking her, including many whom Tryon's
inquiries had placed upon the alert. If she should prove still
missing, he would resume the journey to Patesville and continue the
search in that direction. She had probably not wandered far from the
highroad; even in delirium she would be likely to avoid the deep woods,
with which her illness was associated.

He had retraced more than half the distance to Clinton when he overtook
a covered wagon. The driver, when questioned, said that he had met a
young negro with a mule, and a cart in which lay a young woman, white
to all appearance, but claimed by the negro to be a colored girl who
had been taken sick on the road, and whom he was conveying home to her
mother at Patesville. From a further description of the cart Tryon
recognized it as the one he had met the day before. The woman could be
no other than Rena. He turned his mare and set out swiftly on the road
to Patesville.

If anything could have taken more complete possession of George Tryon
at twenty-three than love successful and triumphant, it was love
thwarted and denied. Never in the few brief delirious weeks of his
courtship had he felt so strongly drawn to the beautiful sister of the
popular lawyer, as he was now driven by an aching heart toward the same
woman stripped of every adventitions advantage and placed, by custom,
beyond the pale of marriage with men of his own race. Custom was
tyranny. Love was the only law. Would God have made hearts to so
yearn for one another if He had meant them to stay forever apart? If
this girl should die, it would be he who had killed her, by his
cruelty, no less surely than if with his own hand he had struck her
down. He had been so dazzled by his own superiority, so blinded by his
own glory, that he had ruthlessly spurned and spoiled the image of God
in this fair creature, whom he might have had for his own
treasure,--whom, please God, he would yet have, at any cost, to love
and cherish while they both should live. There were difficulties--they
had seemed insuperable, but love would surmount them. Sacrifices must
be made, but if the world without love would be nothing, then why not
give up the world for love? He would hasten to Patesville.