But the sun was not more than an hour high, and the thought that he must pass another night alone upon the prairie was discouraging. His clothes were wet as they could be, and the cool wind, blowing upon him, made him tremble and shiver. He was bruised and sore and weak, but happily his "ride upon the storm" had not resulted in serious injury. There were no broken bones to disable him. The water he had drank had refreshed him greatly, but oh, how hunger gnawed upon him! He sat up and looked about him in shivering despair. He found that he had been lying upon the verge of a fissure in the ground, such as are often come upon in prairie countries. It was but a few feet deep and three or four wide at the top. He threw himself forward, face downward, and looked listlessly into this cleft in the earth, thinking that perhaps, if he had strength enough left to gather an armful or two of grass to lie upon, a bed down there, sheltered as it would be from the wind, would be more comfortable than where he then was. But as his dull eyes roved over the bottom of the narrow chasm, they saw something that put new life and hope into his despairing heart. A few yards from where he lay, evidently blown there by the storm that had just passed, were three or four prairie-chickens, huddled together, with drenched plumage, their lives drowned out of them. The trench had been filled with water by the tremendous fall of rain, which had now soaked away through the fissures in its bottom, and the chickens had lodged against some unevenness of surface, as the water subsided. Jimmy descended into the gap and quickly secured one of the birds; then he looked about for some means of cooking it. He was ravenously hungry, but could he eat raw meat? CHAPTER XXVII. Lottie was startled out of her self-possession by Mr. Highton's speech to his wife. She turned quickly, and stretching out an imploring hand toward her, begged her not to go. But Mrs. Highton, with a coarse laugh, exclaimed, "Oh, you needn't be afraid. He ain't a-goin' to hurt you!" and walked out of the room. There were a few whispered words between man and wife before the woman left the house, and while these were being said, Lottie's courage was coming back, and when Mr. Highton came in he found her seated composedly upon the lounge, with Eva nestled close to her side. He threw himself into the arm-chair which his wife had vacated, and sat for some minutes eying Lottie from under his shaggy eye-brows, without speaking. Then he shifted in his seat, crossed one leg over the other and said, in an insinuating tone. "You seem to hev a very poor opinion of me, miss." Lottie made no reply to this, and he continued, more roughly: "You think I had a hand in your brother's runnin' off. How did you come by sech an idea as that?" "I have already told you that I know _some one_ persuaded him to go. No one but you could have had any object in doing that," replied Lottie, steadily.