I may be skilful in analyzing the feelings of others, but I have little success with my own. As the chill loneliness thickened around me, I wished again for Fort Defiance. Out of danger now, the danger that I had been in seemed so little, incredible perhaps. After all, I might have yielded too easily to a frightened girl's fears. But she had been frightened on my account. That was a tender thought. I smiled in the darkness at the thought and the memory of that early kiss, for which I was not sorry. The cold darkness of the mountains and the warm walls of Fort Defiance began to contend for first place in my mind. The belief that in the flush of the interview with his daughter I had overrated the fanaticism of the colonel grew, and my sense of loneliness egged it on until it became conviction. The strength and courage which I had felt at the start waned. The cold slid into my bones and chilled the marrow. I sat for a few moments on a big stone at the bottom of a great cleft, that I might rest myself. Over the knife-edge of the tallest ridge, a moon very white and cold looked at me as if wondering what I was doing in an otherwise deserted world. To this I could return no answer. All my intentions were failing; I was uncertain of myself. The advice to me to push on continually to the southwest had been clear and decisive, and I had been following it most diligently for at least three hours. But there was my star in the southwest burning as brilliantly as ever and also as far away as ever. Above me were the dusky skies, the moon calm and cold, and about me was the wilderness. I shut my eyes and saw my room in Fort Defiance, a cell still, but sheltered and warm.