f an old trail. The growth ended abruptly at
the edge of a small, dry watercourse, which came down to the lake; and
issuing into the open here, the riders beheld the dreaded goal of their
long journey immediately before them.

As they crossed the stones, they were ready to fancy they could hear,
each the beating of the other's heart; and the scene before them was
bitten into their brains, to endure hideously vivid and minute while
life endured. The shack presented a three-quarter view, front and side.
It topped a gentle, uneven acclivity of grass, rising from the
watercourse at its side; while in front, the ground extended level a
hundred feet to the edge of a cut-bank. This bank rose out of the lake
sheer and loamy, to the height of a cottage roof; and over the edge hung
a tangled fringe of grass-roots.

Desolation was the cry of it all; winters upon winters had bleached the
logs of the shack silvery like old hair; the chimney had fallen; and all
four quarters of glass in the single window were out. At one time the
slope between the hut and the bed of the stream had evidently been a
theatre of industry; for the ground was pitted and hummocked and rutted;
but long ago the grass had indifferently muffled it over, like graves in
an old cemetery. In the centre of this waste stood, the picture of
dejection, an Indian-bred cayuse, miserable burlesque of the equine
species, no bigger than a donkey, and incredibly hairy and misshapen.
His back was galled; and one leg, which he painfully favoured, puffed to
treble its size at the hock. Even the great cottonwood trees springing
beyond the hut, with their shattered branches, and blotched and greenish
trunks, breathed decay. An ancient dugout, lying at the mouth of the
watercourse, was, like everything else, rotting and seamed.

And on the bench at the door of the hut sat the evil genius of the
scene; a man with his legs sprawling in front of him, and his head
fallen over and back against the wall. He made no move at their
approach; and when they came close, they saw that he slept. Pitilessly
revealed in the strong sunlight, he made a spectacle at which the most
indifferent stranger would have shuddered and sickened--and it was
reserved for the woman who had exalted him in her maiden's heart, to see
him then. His mouth hung open; he breathed stertorously; and the flies,
buzzing in and out of the open door beside him, crawled at will over his
ashen face. That his chin was freshly