His breath caught and his eyes burned with the tears that lay behind them.

He walked faster to flee from it, but it came upon him more heavily until it made a breaking load,--the loss of his sister by worse than death, his father and mother driven out at night and their home burned, his father killed by a mob whose aim had lacked even the dignity of the murderer's--for they had seemingly intended but a brutal piece of horse-play; his mother dead from exposure due to Gentile persecutions; the girl he had loved taken from him by Gentile persuasions.

If only she had been left him so that now he could put his head down upon her shoulder, slight as that shoulder was, and feel the supreme soothing of a woman's touch; if only the hurts had not all come at once! The pain sickened him.

He was far out on the prairie now, away from the sleeping encampment, and he threw himself down to give way to his grief.

Almost silently he wept, yet with sobs that choked him and cramped him from head to foot.