Trying feebly to gather up again the threads of her life, she wished to send word to the friends at Perfection City that she was still alive. The negroes, who were the only inhabitants of the wretched house where she was, seemed not to heed her wishes. They refused to take any messages, but would not say why. Olive grew stronger, for her young vitality exerted itself. She demanded to know why they would not do as she wished, but they fled from her questions and left her to her suspicions. She tormented them with questions, and at last they said the white-faced lady had forbidden them ever to come near her house again, and they were afraid: she was a very terrible looking lady when she was angry. Then Olive used her powers of persuasion upon the negro lad and eventually got him to take her message in spite of what his mother said. That was the scrap of paper that had come into Ezra’s hands. The Pioneers scattered in systematic search for Olive, spreading out in all directions in a way that could not fail to be speedily successful. Brother Green found her on the second day, while Ezra found the two horses which a thrifty settler had impounded in his own fields and was unobtrusively working until they should be called for by their owner. Brother Green was overjoyed at finding Olive and was not so overwhelmed at hearing of her long illness as, under different circumstances, he might have been. In fact he was almost pleased, for that fact, taken together with the negro woman’s graphic account of finding her alone and ill on the prairie on the day “o’ de hoss-thief tryin’,” made it clear to him that she had never been with Cotterell since she was at the abortive trial. She was very weak and languid and took little heed of him or his remarks. “Ezra will be out of his mind with joy,” he said, by way of rousing her to some interest, as he was settling her as comfortably as he could in the ox-waggon, preparatory to setting out on their return. “Ezra is dead,” said Olive wearily. Brother Green stared hard at her. “What crazy fancy is this? Ezra is alive and riding over towards Jacksonville at this moment hunting for you.” “She told me he was dead,” said Olive, beginning to cry from the revulsion of feeling combined with physical suffering. “How dared the woman tell such a lie!” exclaimed Brother Green angrily, and then after a moment he added more mildly, “Perhaps it was a mere mistake, she seems to have been kind to you, but negroes are not a truth-telling race.” “It was not the negro woman, it was Madame,” said Olive in a hushed and awe-struck voice. “Nonsense, you are raving, Sister Olive,” said he sharply. “She came to me and told me during my illness.” “When?” “I can’t tell. I don’t remember when things happened. I was so ill.” “Then depend upon it, you have fancied this. Fever fancies seem very real at times.” He experienced a certain relief in speaking thus confidently on the subject to her.