was awakened from his sleep by
a knock on the door. He wrapped his great buffalo-coat about him, and
answered the summons. Without in the damp darkness stood Pierre.

"Father," he cried, "Ninon has sent for you. Since she left you, she has
been very ill. I have done what I could; but now she hardly speaks, but
I make out that she wants you." Ten minutes later, they were in Ninon's
cabin. When Father de Smet looked at her he knew she was dying. He had
seen the Indians like that many times during the winter. It was the
plague, but driven in to prey upon the system by the exposure. The
Parisienne's teeth were set, but she managed to smile upon her visitor
as he threw off his coat and bent over her. He poured some whiskey for
her; but she could not get the liquid over her throat.

"Do not," she said fiercely between those set white teeth, "do not
forget the lilies." She sank back and fixed her glazing eyes on the
antlers, and kept them there watching those dangling silken scarves,
while the priest, in haste, spoke the words for the departing soul.

The next morning she lay dead among those half barbaric relics of her
coquetry, and two white lilies with hearts of gold shed perfume from an
altar in a wilderness.

Up the Gulch

"GO West?" sighed Kate. "Why, yes! I'd like to go West."

She looked at the babies, who were playing on the floor with their
father, and sighed again.

"You've got to go somewhere, you know, Kate. It might as well be west as
in any other direction. And this is such a chance! We can't have mamma
lying around on sofas without any roses in her cheeks, can we?" He put
this last to the children, who, being yet at the age when they talked
in "Early English," as their father called it, made a clamorous but
inarticulate reply.

Major Shelly, the grandfather of these very young persons, stroked his
mustache and looked indulgent.

"Show almost human intelligence, don't they?" said their father, as he
lay flat on his back and permitted the babies to climb over him.

"Ya-as," drawled the major. "They do. Don't see how you account for it,
Jack."

Jack roared, and the lips of the babies trembled with fear.

Their mother said nothing. She was on the sofa, her hands lying
inert, her eyes fixed on her rosy babies with an expression which her
father-in-law and her husband tried hard not to notice.

It was not easy to tell why Kate was ailing. Of course, the babies were
young, but there were other reas