are stark mad, should take you out
to the Indian frontier?" he demanded.

"I might answer, to be with my only brother, I being his only sister."

"Bosh! Men's wives very seldom accompany them to these savage posts,
much less their sisters! What does a young officer want his sister
tagging after him for?"

"It is not that Sylvan especially wants me, nor for his sake alone that
I go."

"Well, then, what in the name of lunacy do you go for?"

"That I may devote my time and fortune to a good cause--to the education
of Indian girls and boys. I mean to build--"

"That, or something like that, was what Rothsay tried to do when you
drove him away, as if he had been a leper, to the desert. Well, go on!
What next? Let us hear the whole of the mad scheme!"

"I mean to build a capacious school house, in which I will receive,
board, lodge, and teach as many Indian children as may be intrusted to
me, until the house shall be full."

"Moonstruck mania! That is what your mad husband driven mad by
you--attempted on a smaller scale, and failed."

"That is why I wish to do this. I wish to follow in his footsteps It is
the best thing I can do to honor his memory."

"But he was murdered for his pains."

Cora shuddered and covered her face with her hands for a space; then she
answered, slowly:

"There may be many failures; but there will never be any success unless
the failures are made stepping stones to final victory."

"Fudge! See here, mistress! No doubt you suffer a good many stings of
conscience for having driven the best man that ever lived--except, hem!
well--to his death! But you need not on that account expatriate yourself
from civilization, to go out to try to teach those red devils who
murdered your husband and burned his hut, and who will probably murder
you and burn your school house! You have been a false woman and a
miserable sinner, Cora Rothsay! And you have deserved to suffer and you
have suffered, there is no doubt about that! But you have repented, and
may be pardoned. You need not immolate yourself at your age. You are a
mere girl. You will get over your morbid grief. You may marry again."

Cora slowly, sadly, silently shook her head.

"Oh, yes; you will."

"No, no; no, dear grandpa. I will bear my dear, lost husband's name to
the end of my life, and it shall be inscribed on my tomb. Ah! would to
Heaven that at the last, I might lay my ashes beside his," she moaned.

"Now don't be a confounded fool