She wondered why he did not try to light a fire, but she wouldn't ask him another thing, if she died. In point of fact, he knew the sagebrush would not burn. Suddenly the wind blew fiercer, there came a rushing sound, and the top and walls of the wigwam were whisked off like a flash, and as they staggered to their feet, buffeted by the whirling bushes, a cloud of fine alkali-dust enveloped them, blinding their eyes, penetrating their ears and noses, and setting them gasping, sneezing, and coughing spasmodically. Then, like a puff of smoke, the suffocating storm was dissipated, and when they opened their smarting eyes there was nothing but the silent, glorious desolation of the ghostly desert around them, with the snow-peaks in the distance glittering beneath the moon. A sand-spout had struck them, that was all,--one of the whirling dust-columns which they had admired all day from the car-windows. Wretched enough before, both for physical and sentimental reasons, this last experience quite demoralized Miss Dwyer, and she sat down and cried. Now, a few tears, regarded from a practical, middle-aged point of view, would not appear to have greatly complicated the situation, but they threw Lombard into a panic. If she was going to cry, something must be done. Whether anything could be done or not, something _must_ be done. “Don't leave me,” she cried hysterically, as he rushed off to reconnoitre the vicinity. “I 'll return presently,” he called back. But five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and he did not come back. Terror dried her tears, and her heart almost stopped beating. She had quite given him up for lost, and herself too, when with inexpressible relief she heard him call to her. She replied, and in a moment more he was at her side, breathless with running. “I lost my bearings,” he said. “If you had not answered me, I could not have found you.” “Don't leave me again,” she sobbed, clinging to his arm. He put his arms round her and kissed her. It was mean, base, contemptible, to take advantage of her agitation in that way, but she did not resist, and he did it again and again,--I forbear to say how many times. “Is n't it a perfectly beautiful night?” he exclaimed, with a fine gush of enthusiasm. “Is n't it exquisite?” she echoed, with a rush of sympathetic feeling. “See those stars: they look as if they had just been polished,” he cried. “What a droll idea!” she exclaimed gleefully. “But do see that lovely mountain.” Holding her with a firmer clasp, and speaking with what might be styled a fierce tenderness, he demanded, “What did you mean, miss, by refusing me this afternoon?” “What did you go at me so stupidly for? I had to refuse,” she retorted smilingly. “Will you be my wife?” “Yes, sir; I meant to be all the time.”