rn back _now_, Meriwether Lewis! Come back!

The letter was not signed, and needed not to be. Meriwether Lewis sat
staring at the paper clutched in his hand.

Her face! Ah, did he not see it now? Was it not true what she had
said? He saw her face now--but not smiling, happy, contented, as it
once had been. No, he saw it pale and in distress. He saw tears in her
eyes. And she had written him:

Oh, if only I had the right to lay some command on you!

Was not he, who had forgotten honor, subject now to any command that
she might give him?

"Will, Will!" exclaimed Meriwether Lewis, sharply, imperatively, to
his friend, whom he could see dimly at a little distance as he lay.

The long figure in its robes straightened quickly, for by day or night
William Clark was instantly ready for any sudden alarm. He started up
on his robe, with his hand on his rifle.

"Who calls there? Who goes?" he cried, half awake.

"It is I, Will," said Meriwether Lewis, advancing toward him.
"Listen--tell me, Will, why did you do this?"

"Why did I do what? Merne, what is wrong?"

Clark was now on his feet, and Lewis held out the letter to him. He
took it in his hand, looked at it wonderingly.

"This letter----" began Meriwether Lewis. "Certainly you carried it
for me--why did you not bring it to me long ago?"

"What letter? Whose letter is it, Merne? I never saw it before. What
is it you are saying? Are you mad?"

"I think so," said Lewis, "I think I must be. Here is a letter--I
found it but now in my bed. I thought perhaps you had had it for me a
long time, and placed it there as a surprise."

"Who sends it, Merne. What does it say?"

"It is from the woman whose face I have seen at night, Will. She asks
me to come back!"

"Burn it--throw it in the fire!" said William Clark sharply. "Go back?
What, forsake Mr. Jefferson--leave me?"

"God forgive me, Will, but you search my very heart! For one moment I
was on the point of declaring myself too ill to finish this
journey--on the point of letting you have all the honor of it. I was
going to surrender my place to you."

"You cannot desert us, Merne! You shall not! Go back to bed! Give me
the letter! Bah! it is some counterfeit, some trick of one of the
men!"

"It would be worth any man's life to try a jest like that," said
Meriwether Lewis. "It is no counterfeit. I know it too well. This
letter was written before we left St. Louis. How it came here I know
not, but I know wh