the fluttering little figure of his late companion crossing swiftly in
the darkness.

He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights moving about a central
point on the mountain, soon found himself breathless among a crowd of
awe-stricken and sorrowful men. Out from among them the child appeared,
and, taking the master's hand, led him silently before what seemed a
ragged hole in the mountain. Her face was quite white, but her excited
manner gone, and her look that of one to whom some long-expected
event had at last happened--an expression that to the master in his
bewilderment seemed almost like relief. The walls of the cavern were
partly propped by decaying timbers. The child pointed to what appeared
to be some ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late
occupant. The master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent
over them. It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a
bullet in his heart, lying beside his empty pocket.


CHAPTER II


The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a "change of
heart" supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly described
in the gulches and tunnels. It was thought there that Mliss had
"struck a good lead." So when there was a new grave added to the
little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a little board
and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER came out quite
handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of one of "our oldest
Pioneers," alluding gracefully to that "bane of noble intellects," and
otherwise genteelly shelving our dear brother with the past. "He leaves