him silently before what seemed a
ragged hole in the mountain. Her face was quite white, but her excited
manner gone, and her look that of one to whom some long-expected
event had at last happened--an expression that to the master in his
bewilderment seemed almost like relief. The walls of the cavern were
partly propped by decaying timbers. The child pointed to what appeared
to be some ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late
occupant. The master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent
over them. It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a
bullet in his heart, lying beside his empty pocket.

CHAPTER II

The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a "change of
heart" supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly described
in the gulches and tunnels. It was thought there that Mliss had
"struck a good lead." So when there was a new grave added to the
little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a little board
and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER came out quite
handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of one of "our oldest
Pioneers," alluding gracefully to that "bane of noble intellects," and
otherwise genteelly shelving our dear brother with the past. "He leaves
an only child to mourn his loss," says the BANNER, "who is now an
exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley." The
Rev. McSnagley, in fact, made a strong point of Mliss's conversion,
and, indirectly attributing to the unfortunate child the suicide of
her father, made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial
effects of the "silent tomb," and in this cheerful contemplation
drove most of the children into speechless horror, and caused the
pink-and-white scions of the first families to howl dismally and refuse
to be comforted.

The long dry summer came. As each fierce day burned itself out in little
whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the upspringing
breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the green wave which
in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew sere and dry and
hard. In those days the master, strolling in the little churchyard of
a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised to find a few wild flowers
plucked from the damp pine forests scattered there, and oftener rude
wreaths hung upon the little pine cross. Most of these wreaths were
formed of a sweet-scented grass, which the children loved to