ers are at their old complaints again about what they call 'Indian
depredations,' and I have just received orders from head-quarters to
keep the settlement clear of all vagabond aborigines. I am afraid,
my dear, that a strict construction of the term would include your
protegee."

The time for the departure of the Fourth Artillery had come. The night
before was thick and foggy. At one o'clock, a shot on the ramparts
called out the guard and roused the sleeping garrison. The new sentry,
Private Grey, had challenged a dusky figure creeping on the glacis, and,
receiving no answer, had fired. The guard sent out presently returned,
bearing a lifeless figure in their arms. The new sentry's zeal, joined
with an ex-frontiersman's aim, was fatal.

They laid the helpless, ragged form before the guard-house door, and
then saw for the first time that it was the Princess. Presently she
opened her eyes. They fell upon the agonized face of her innocent
slayer, but haply without intelligence or reproach.

"Georgy!" she whispered.

"Bob!"

"All's same now. Me get plenty well soon. Me make no more fuss. Me go to
Reservation."

Then she stopped, a tremor ran through her limbs, and she lay still. She
had gone to the Reservation. Not that devised by the wisdom of man, but
that one set apart from the foundation of the world for the wisest as
well as the meanest of His creatures.

THE ILIAD OF SANDY BAR.

Before nine o'clock it was pretty well known all along the river that
the two partners of the "Amity Claim" had quarrelled and separated at
daybreak. At that time the attention of their nearest neighbor had
been attracted by the sounds of altercations and two consecutive
pistol-shots. Running out, he had seen, dimly, in the gray mist that
rose from the river, the tall form of Scott, one of the partners,
descending the hill toward the canyon; a moment later, York, the
other partner, had appeared from the cabin, and walked in an opposite
direction toward the river, passing within a few feet of the curious
watcher. Later it was discovered that a serious Chinaman, cutting
wood before the cabin, had witnessed part of the quarrel. But John was
stolid, indifferent, and reticent. "Me choppee wood, me no fightee,"
was his serene response to all anxious queries. "But what did they SAY,
John?" John did not sabe. Colonel Starbottle deftly ran over the various
popular epithets which a generous public sentiment might accept as
reasonabl