tle jewelry she had taken with her, but
added that she was shamefully cheated, and would soon be compelled to
seek employment of some sort in order to support herself.

"I am quite sure," she said, with a kind of heartrending cheerfulness,
"that I can earn my forty cents a day; and with that, my friend, I shall
be as happy as a queen, and wait for your return, free from want."

In the other she wrote,--

"None of my efforts to procure work has so far succeeded. The future
is getting darker and darker. Soon I shall be without bread. I shall
struggle on to the last extremity, were it only not to give my enemies
the joy of seeing me dead. But, Daniel, if you wish to see your
Henrietta again, come back; oh, come back!"

Daniel had not suffered half as much the day when the assassin's ball
ploughed through his chest. He was evidently reading one of those last
cries which precede agony. After these two fearful letters, he could
only expect a last one from Henrietta,--a letter in which she would tell
him, "All is over. I am dying. Farewell!"

He sent for the chief surgeon, and said, as soon as he entered,--

"I must go!"

The good doctor frowned, and replied rudely,--

"Are you mad? Do you know that you cannot stand up fifteen minutes?"

"I can lie down in my berth."

"You would kill yourself."

"What of that? I would rather suffer death than what I now endure.
Besides, I have made up my mind irrevocably! Read this, and you will see
yourself that I cannot do otherwise."

The chief surgeon took in Henrietta's last letter almost at a single
glance; but he held it in his hand for some time, pretending to read it,
but in reality meditating.

"I am sure," the excellent man thought in his heart, "I am sure, in this
man's place, I should do the same. But would this imprudence be of any
use to him? No; for he could not reach the mouth of the Dong-Nai alive.
Therefore it is my duty to keep him here: and that can be done, since he
is as yet unable to go out alone; and Lefloch will obey me, I am sure,
when I tell him that his master's life depends upon his obedience."

Too wise to meet so decided a determination as Daniel's was by a flat
refusal, he said,--

"Very well, then; be it as you choose!"

Only he came in again the same evening, and, with an air of
disappointment, said to Daniel,--

"To go is all very well; but there is one difficulty in the way, of
which neither you nor I have thought."

"And what is that