When the great tragedy came, and she was driven with the host over the mountains, Dick suffered keenly. Here again his old habit of creating a picture of the physical surroundings tormented him. The pictures of what was happening to the girl in that bleak and distracted land came before his eyes as he went about his daily work, stinging him as an unexpected shot might have done, or wakened him, shivering, from his sleep by their horrible realism. His anxiety became so great in the early part of the year that he had almost persuaded himself to join Reuben Cowder in his distracted search, when the cablegram came that Nancy was found. Dick had a vain hope that they might come home soon, but the first letters destroyed that. It was only by long and careful nursing that the exhausted vitality would be brought back, and the girl probably would never again be able to support long strains. Reuben Cowder was ready and glad, so he wrote, to give up everything else to the care of his precious girl, even to never coming back again to America if that were necessary. Dick had a great sense of loss--one that he did not attempt to analyze or justify--over these intimations that it might be possible that Nancy would never again see Sabinsport. When Nikola came, however, a different face was put on the matter, for he was all confidence that Miss Nancy would never consent to live away from Sabinsport, that she loved it above all places, and that the thing that was sustaining her now was the thought of coming back with her father. They had many rare talks, these two, and little by little Dick was able to piece together, down to the last and commonest detail, the weeks of danger and hardship that the little party had endured. It was a brave, brave tale, and the more he talked it over with Nikola the prouder he became of Nancy Cowder, and the quicker his heart beat at the thought of her. Throughout the months when Sabinsport was full of anxiety over Verdun, of sorrow over Mikey's death, of more or less irritated activity over the Border troubles, Dick was daily going about her streets, sharing in her sorrows and in her perplexities, always deep in his mind and in his heart the thought of this girl over the seas.