tive surroundings which needed to be part
of their requisite equipment. It was indeed as if the two friends were
fitted by the plan of Providence for this great enterprise which they
concluded in such simple, unpretending, yet minutely thorough fashion.
Neither thought himself a hero, therefore each was one. The largest
glory to be accorded them is that they found their ambition and their
content in the day's work well done.]

William Clark went on with his reproving.

"Tell me, Merne, what are you thinking of? It is not that woman?"

He seemed to feel the sudden shrinking of the tall figure at his side.

"I have touched you on the raw once more, haven't I, Merne?" he
exclaimed. "I never meant to. I only want to see you happy."

"You must not be too uneasy, Will," returned Meriwether Lewis, at
last. "It is only that sometimes at night I lie awake and ponder over
things. And the nights themselves are wonderful!"

"Saw you ever such nights, Merne, in all your life? Breathed you ever
such air as these plains carry in the nighttime? Why do you not
exult--what is it you cannot forget? You don't really deceive me,
Merne. What is it that you _see_ when you lie awake at night under the
stars? Some face, eh? What, Merne? You mean to tell me you are still
so foolish? We left three months ago. I gave you two months for
forgetting her--and that is enough! Come, now, perhaps some maid of
the Mandans, on ahead, will prove fair enough to pipe to you, or to
touch the bull-hide tambourine in such fashion as to charm you from
your sorrows! No, don't be offended--it is only that I want to tell
you not to take that old affair too hard. And now, it is time for you
to turn in."

William Clark himself arose and strolled to his own blanket-roll,
spread it out, and lay down beneath the sky to sleep. Meriwether Lewis
sought to follow his example, and spread open his robe and blankets
close to the fire. As he leaned back, he felt something hard and
crackling under his hand, and looked down.

It was his custom to carry in his blankets, for safekeeping, his long
spyglass, a pair of dry moccasins and a buckskin tunic. These articles
were here, as he expected to find them. Yet here among them was a
folded and sealed envelope--a letter! He had not placed it here; yet
here it was.

He caught it up in his hand, looked at it wonderingly, kicked the ends
of the embers together so that they flamed up, bent forward to read
the superscription--and