Nothing is said of the road to Bliss,--not even that there is such a Bliss
only sixteen miles away. Being a station on the Oregon Short Line, Bliss
can take care of itself.

At these cross-roads, on a bright, windy September morning, our travelers
had halted for reasons, the chief of which was to say good-by. They had
slept over night at the ferry, parted their baggage in the morning, and now
in separate wagons by divergent roads were setting forth on the last stage
of their journey.

Daphne had left some necessary of her toilet at the ferry, and the driver
of Mr. Withers's team had gone back to ask the people at the ferry-house
to find it. This was the cause of their waiting at the cross-roads. Mr.
Withers and Daphne were on their devoted way like conscientious tourists,
though both were deadly weary, to prostrate themselves before the
stupendous beauty of the great lone falls at Shoshone. Thane, with Kinney's
team, was prosaically bound down the river to examine and report on a
placer-mine. But before his business would be finished Mr. Withers and his
niece would have returned by railroad via Bliss to Boise, and have left
that city for the East; so this was likely to be a long good-by.

If anything could have come of Mr. Withers's project of a memorial fountain
at Pilgrim Station, there might have been a future to the acquaintance, for
Thane was to have had charge of the execution of the design; but nature had
lightly frustrated that fond, beneficent dream.

Mr. Kinney had offered the practical suggestion that the road should go to
the fountain, since the fountain could not come to the road. Its course
was a mere accident of the way the first wagon-wheels had gone. The wheels
were few now, and with such an inducement might well afford to cross the