ging seemed only to increase
it.

"God!" She sat up suddenly and struck her breast as though the blow
might somehow stop the pain there, and asked herself fiercely: "Must I
live forever with this heartache? Isn't there some peace? Some way of
dulling it until my heart stops beating?" She stretched out her arms and
her voice broke with the sob that choked her as she cried miserably:

"Oh, Hughie! Hughie! I love you, and I can't help it!"

She felt herself stifling in the wagon and flung aside the covering.
Thrusting her bare feet into moccasins and slipping on a sweater, she
stepped into the white world that had the still emptiness of space.

The sheep dog got up from under the wagon and stood in front of her with
a look of inquiry, but she gave no heed to him; instead, after a
moment's indecision, she walked swiftly to the hillside where a shaft of
marble shone in the moonlight. The sheep dog was at her heels, and when
she crawled beneath the wire that fenced the spot where Mormon Joe had
turned to dust, it followed.

Mormon Joe was only a name, a memory, but he had loved her unselfishly
and truly. Kate clasped her arms about the shaft and laid her cheek
against it as if in some way she might draw consolation from it. But its
coldness chilled her. Then, with her face upturned in supplication, as
though his soul might be somewhere in the infinite space above her, she
cried aloud in her anguish as she had in another and different kind of
crisis:

"Uncle Joe, I'm lost! I don't know which way to go--there's no signboard
to direct me. Please, please, if you can, come back and help
me--please--help Katie Prentice!"

The sheep dog with his head on his paws watched her gravely. In the
corral below there was the sound of stirring horses; otherwise only
silence answered her. No light, no help came to her. Her hands dropped
gradually to her sides. It was always so--in the end she was thrown back
upon herself. Nothing came to her save by her own efforts. There were no
miracles performed for Kate Prentice. A sullen defiance filled her. If
this was all life had for her she could stand it; she could go on as
usual taking her medicine with as little fuss as possible. That's all
life seemed to be--taking the medicine the Fates doled out in one form
or another. To live bravely, to die with all the courage one could
muster, were the principal things anyhow. She got up from her knees by
the sunken grave slowly and stood erect once