She had some idea of its value, as she had heard Stokes tell how much it cost, and she had a still more definite idea that it should never have been given to her, and that she ought not to keep it. There was no way of returning it now. She must wait until she reached Oak City, when she would write her father and ask him what to do. Thus deciding, she put the box in the under pocket of her skirt, where no one could get it without her knowledge. Then she began to think of the contents of the note and what Mrs. Baker had said to her. Did Mr. Pennington care for her in the way the woman had insinuated? It would seem so, and for one moment something like gratification stirred her pulse, but passed quickly. There was nothing in her nature which could ever respond to love from him. She liked him,—that was all. If he cared very much for her she was sorry, and sorry, too, that he had given her the ring. By this time she had settled herself for the night, and her thoughts were growing confused. The whir and pounding of the wheels made her think of a tornado which had once swept the plain near Samona. Artie was waving his long stick from the platform, her mother was kissing her and leaving tears on her cheeks, and Mrs. Baker was holding up ’Mandy as a warning against girls marrying men who drank. All these thoughts and more mingled in her dreams, as the train sped on its way, and the air in the car grew closer and the lamps burned low, with a smell of bad oil, and the conductor came through now and then with his lantern and looked at the sleeping crowd. Once, as he stopped near Elithe, whose face was plainly visible, he pulled over her the shawl which had partially slipped from her shoulders, and wondered who she was and why she was alone. “Young and pretty and innocent. I’ll keep a little watch over her and speak to Simmons about her when he comes on for duty,” he thought. Meanwhile the father and mother in the home growing farther and farther away with every turn of the wheels, were praying silently and constantly that no harm might befall her. John Pennington, too, who hardly knew whether he really believed anything or not, said to himself, as he sat smoking in his room at “The Helena” until far into the night: “If there is a God, and I suppose there must be, I hope He will take care of Elithe.” God did take care of her, but did not keep her from being uncomfortable and tired and sickening of both her own lunch basket and that of Mrs. Baker, as the food grew stale and old, and the car grew hot and dusty, and so crowded that her two seats had to be given up, and she was finally driven to sitting with Mrs. Baker, whose fat shoulder was her pillow during the night before the train drew into Chicago. Here she was to part with Mrs. Baker, who waited in the station till she found the conductor of the Eastern train and told him of Elithe, bidding him look after her till he reached the terminus of his route.