orning, looking into each other's
faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the
position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the
Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That
night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the
protecting pines, invaded the very hut.

Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept
closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney, can you
pray?" "No, dear," said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing
exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's shoulder,
spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the
head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.

The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow,
shaken from the long pine-boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and
settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds
looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace
of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully
flung from above.

They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and
footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers
brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from
the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which was she that had sinned.
Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving
them still locked in each other's arms.

But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine-trees, they
found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie-knife. It bore
the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:--

BENEATH THIS TREE
LIES THE BODY
OF
JOHN OAKHURST,
WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
AND
HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.

And pulseless and cold, with a derringer by his side and a bullet in his
heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at
once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.

IX. MARKHEIM[*] (1884)

[* From "The Merry Men." Used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons,
authorized American publishers of Stevenson's Works.]

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850-1894)

[_Setting_. There is no finer model for the study of setting than this