240 BUFFALO LAND. 



widowhood. Her face was one of those which, smit- 

 ten by, sorrow, are stricken until death. Once evi- 

 dently comely, the smiles and warm flush had died 

 out from it forever — ^just as in the lapse of centuries 

 the colors fade from a painting. Though scarcely 

 twenty-five, her youth was but an image of the past. 

 She told her story in that mechanical, absent sort of 

 manner which showed that no morning had followed 

 the evening of that desolate day. She was still living 

 with her dead. 



" The Lord gave me then a cup so bitter," she said, 

 " that its sting drove a mother's joy from my heart 

 forever. I have been at peace since, because, among 

 the dregs, I found that God had placed a diamond 

 for me to wear when I was wedded to him. Even then 

 I did not rebel and reproach my Maker, but I sunk 

 down with one loud cry, and it went right along to 

 the great white throne up there, with the spirits of 

 my husband and my babe. I thought I could see 

 them in the air, like two white doves flitting upward, 

 bearing with them, as part of our sacrifice, the cry 

 that I gave, when my heart-strings seemed to snap, 

 and I knew that I was a widow and childless. Per- 

 haps I was crazed for a moment, or — I do not know — 

 perhaps my spirit really did go with them part of the 

 way. The neighbors found me there for dead, and I 

 remained cold, till they brought in my dear babe, my 

 poor, mutilated babe, and placed him on my breast. 

 His warm blood must have woke me, and I sat up, and 

 saw them bringing John's bod}^ to lay it by me. And 

 then the whole scene came before me again, and it 

 seemed so stamped into my very brain, that shutting 



