unjust suspicions. She appreciates your anxiety, and, knowing that you
could not see her, told me to give you this." He handed Low the ring and
the letter.

The climax had been forced, and, it must be confessed, was by no means
the one Mr. Wynn had fully arranged in his own inner consciousness.
He had intended to take an ostentatious leave of Low in the bar-room,
deliver the letter with archness, and escape before a possible
explosion. He consequently backed towards the door for an emergency.
But he was again at fault. That unaffected stoical fortitude in acute
suffering, which was the one remaining pride and glory of Low's race,
was yet to be revealed to Wynn's civilized eyes.

The young man took the letter, and read it without changing a muscle,
folded the ring in it, and dropped it into his haversack. Then he picked
up his blanket, threw it over his shoulder, took his trusty rifle in his
hand, and turned towards Wynn as if coldly surprised that he was still
standing there.

"Are you--are you--going?" stammered Wynn.

"Are you NOT?" replied Low dryly, leaning on his rifle for a moment as
if waiting for Wynn to precede him. The preacher looked at him a moment,
mumbled something, and then shambled feebly and ineffectively down the
staircase before Low, with a painful suggestion to the ordinary observer
of being occasionally urged thereto by the moccasin of the young man
behind him.

On reaching the lower hall, however, he endeavored to create a diversion
in his favor by dashing into the bar-room and clapping the occupants on