d, sir?"

"Poor fellow, he went to an even worse fate than being shot, for he
wandered into the desert and died of starvation there. I knew that he
was guilty of killing Manton Mayhew, but I am sure he had some grave
reason for so doing, but which he would never make known.

"He was a splendid soldier, brave and true, and he would have been
commissioned had not that sad affair occurred."

"Did he give no reason for his act, sir?"

"None; he simply accepted his fate, though it was said to clear himself
he would have had to compromise others, and this he would not do."

"Poor fellow!"

"Yes, I often think of his sad fate."

An antelope was killed that afternoon, and after enjoying a good supper
the surgeon and the gold-hunter lighted their pipes and sat down for a
talk, both anxiously awaiting the coming of Buffalo Bill.

After sitting in silence for some minutes the gold-hunter said:

"Surgeon Powell, you were speaking of Wallace Weston to-day?"

"Yes."

"You may have noted that the name of Mayhew is upon yonder aspen-tree?"

"And referred to the fact."

"I put it there."

"Yes."

"Then I knew who Black-heart Bill was."

"That is so. I had not thought of that."

"He was the brother of Manton Mayhew, the sergeant."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, sir."

"You knew Sergeant Mayhew, then?"

"Intimately, for we were boys together."

"Ah! tell me of him."

"We lived near each other, sir, and Manton Mayhew was my rival at
school, and also for the love of a pretty girl whom I idolized. He did
all in his power to ruin me, and when I obtained a position in a bank,
where he also was a clerk, he did wreck my life, for I was accused of
robbery, and worse still, of murdering the watchman, who caught me in
the act.

"I would surely have been hanged but for the girl I spoke of, who forced
me to fly for my life, aiding me to escape. I fled, to prove my
innocence, and became a wanderer.

"Then I received a letter from the woman I loved, telling me that she
had discovered that I really was a thief and a murderer, and that she
abhorred where she had loved me.

"And more, when, in my despair I wrote to one who had been my friend to
hear from home, I was told that Manton Mayhew had been the means of
ruining my father financially, and the blow had driven him to suicide,
while my poor mother, heart-broken, had died soon after my flight.

"Nor was this all, for Hugh Mayhew, the brother of Manton, had married
the girl I had