at once. The front apartment of the saloon, though lighted, she found
to be a mere ante-room, bare of all furniture save a few chairs; and
without pausing here the resolute girl, who must have had a foreboding
of the awful truth by this time, passed on into the gambling-room in
the rear. There, stretched upon the floor, shot through the heart, lay
the stark form of the man she had journeyed so far and so patiently
and hopefully to find. He had grown muscular and brawny since she
parted with him. His face, too, had changed, and not for the better:
it was flushed, sodden and bearded, and the beard was dyed black. She
knelt down beside the corpse and took one of the great hands in her
own. It was still warm! But the chill of death crept over it as she
held it to her heart, and thus her last ray of hope expired.

She sat still by her dead till the man's former companions came to
prepare the body for burial. As it was borne to the lonely grave upon
the hillside she walked beside the rough coffin. And when the grave
was reached she dropped upon her knees beside it, and poured forth in
a clear voice a fervent petition to the Most High to receive, for the
sake of the dear Saviour who died for all the world, the soul of this
poor sinner.

They had said that she might bear up till the funeral was over, but
that then she would break down. She did not. The next morning she set
her face to the East, and began again, for the fourth time, that
awful journey across the Plains. We need not follow her throughout its
length. She reached her home worn and sick, but nevertheless at once
took up her old school and went on with it a few weeks. And then the
end came.