enough to fancy being left
alone on the Nevada desert with night coming on. He would have caught
the train without difficulty if his foot had not happened to catch in a
tough clump of sage, throwing him violently to the ground. As he
gathered himself up the train was a hundred yards off, and moving
rapidly. To overtake it was out of the question.

"Stop! ho! stop!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. But there was no
one on the rear platform to see him, and the closed windows and the
rattle of the wheels were sufficient to render a much louder noise than
he could make inaudible to the dozing passengers. And now the engineer
pulled out the throttle-valve to make up for lost time, and the clatter
of the train faded into a distant roar and its lights began to twinkle
into indistinctness.

"Damnation!"

A voice fell like a falling star: "Gentlemen do not use profane language
in ladies' company."

He first looked up in the air, as on the whole the likeliest quarter for
a voice to come from in this desert, then around. Just on the other side
of the track stood Miss Dwyer, smiling with a somewhat constrained
attempt at self-possession. Lombard was a good deal taken aback, but in
his surprise he did not forget that this was the young lady who had
refused him that afternoon.

"I beg your pardon," he replied with a stiff bow: "I did not suppose
that there were any ladies within hearing."

"I got out of the car supposing there was plenty of time to get a
specimen of sagebrush to carry home," she explained, "but when the cars
started, although I was but a little way off, I could not regain the
platform;" which, considering that she wore a tie-back of the then
prevalent fashion, was not surprising.

"Indeed!" replied Lombard with the same formal manner.

"But won't the train come back for us?" she asked in a more anxious
voice.

"That will depend on whether we are missed. Nobody will miss me. Mrs.
Eustis, if she hasn't gone to bed, may miss you."

"But she has. She went to bed before I left the car, and is asleep by
this time."

"That's unfortunate," was his brief reply as he lit a cigar and began to
smoke and contemplate the stars.

His services, so far as he could do anything for her, she should, as a
lady, command, but if she thought that he was going to do the agreeable
after what had happened a couple of hours ago, she was mightily
mistaken.

There was a silence, and then she said, hesitatingly, "What are we go