robbery, the murder; he done it because I told him to, an' because havin'
begun he tried to save me. Why, he wuz a kid ez innocent ez a leetle
toddlin' child. He wanted to go away from here an' be different from wot
he wuz, but I kep' at him an' made him do an' do agin wot has brought the
end to-day. Las' night he cried when I told him he must do the stage
this mornin; seemed like he wuz soft on the girl yonder. It wuz to have
been the las' time--I promised him that, an' so--an' so it is. Men, you
'll find the money an' everything else in the cabin--under the floor of
the cabin. Make it ez square all round ez you kin."

Then Jim Woppit backed a space away, and, before the rest could realize
what he was about, he turned, darted through the narrow thicket, and
hurled himself into the gulch, seven hundred feet down.

But the May sunlight was sweet and gracious, and there lay the dead boy,
caressed of that charity of nature and smiling in its glory.

Bill was the first to speak--Bill Merridew, I mean. He was Steve
Barclay's partner and both had been wronged most grievously.

"Now throw the other one over, too," cried Bill, savagely. "Let 'em both
rot in the gulch!"

But a braver, kindlier man said "No!" It was Three-fingered Hoover, who
came forward now and knelt beside the dead boy and held the white face
between his hard, brown hands and smoothed the yellowish hair and looked
with unspeakable tenderness upon the closed eyes.

"Leave her to me," said he, reverently. "It wuz ez near ez I ever come
to lovin' a woman, and I reckon it's ez near ez I ever _shell_ come. So
let me do with her ez pleases me."

It was their will to let Three-fingered Hoover have his way. With
exceeding tenderness he bore the body back to camp and he gave it into
the hands of womenfolk to prepare it for burial, that no man's touch
should profane that vestige of his love. You see he chose to think of
her to the last as she had seemed to him in life.

And it was another conceit of his to put over the grave, among the
hollyhocks on that mountain-side, a shaft of pure white marble bearing
simply the words "Miss Woppit."

THE TALISMAN

There was a boy named Wilhelm who was the only son of a widow. He was
so devoted and obedient that other people in the village used to be
saying always: "What a good son Wilhelm is; how kind he is to his
mother." So, while he was the example for all the other boys in the
village, he was th