st was to be dreaded for his defenceless
family. Without weakness, with a desperate calm at which I marvel when I
look back upon it, the widow and the orphan awaited the event. On the
last day of the third week we rose in the morning to find ourselves
alone in the house, alone, so far as we searched, on the estate; all our
attendants, with one accord, had fled, and as we knew them to be
gratefully devoted, we drew the darkest intimations from their flight.
The day passed, indeed, without event; but in the fall of the evening we
were called at last into the verandah by the approaching clink of
horse's hoofs.

The doctor, mounted on an Indian pony, rode into the garden, dismounted,
and saluted us. He seemed much more bent, and his hair more silvery than
ever; but his demeanour was composed, serious, and not unkind.

"Madam," said he, "I am come upon a weighty errand; and I would have you
recognise it as an effect of kindness in the President, that he should
send as his ambassador your only neighbour and your husband's oldest
friend in Utah."

"Sir," said my mother, "I have but one concern, one thought. You know
well what it is. Speak: my husband?"

"Madam," returned the doctor, taking a chair on the verandah, "if you
were a silly child my position would now be painfully embarrassing. You
are, on the other hand, a woman of great intelligence and fortitude: you
have, by my forethought, been allowed three weeks to draw your own
conclusions and to accept the inevitable. Further words from me are, I
conceive, superfluous."

My mother was as pale as death, and trembled like a reed; I gave her my
hand, and she kept it in the folds of her dress and wrung it till I
could have cried aloud. "Then, sir," said she at last, "you speak to
deaf ears. If this be indeed so, what have I to do with errands? what do
I ask of Heaven but to die?"

"Come," said the doctor, "command yourself. I bid you dismiss all
thoughts of your late husband, and bring a clear mind to bear upon your
own future and the fate of that young girl."

"You bid me dismiss----" began my mother. "Then you know!" she cried.

"I know," replied the doctor.

"You know?" broke out the poor woman. "Then it was you who did the deed!
I tear off the mask, and with dread and loathing see you as you
are--you, whom the poor fugitive beholds in nightmares, and awakes
raving--you, the Destroying Angel!"

"Well, madam, and what then?" returned the doctor. "Have not my fate