ll the
faithful soul famished for some token that she was not forgotten. Then
one evening she went home from her school to find that the heavens had
fallen. Her father, whom she had left four hours before apparently
in the highest health and spirits, was dead. The village physician
attributed his sudden death to apoplexy, which seems illogical. But
he was dead, whatever the cause, and his orphaned daughter mourned him
with as genuine a grief as ever wrung a human heart.

When in process of time the first transports of grief had subsided
there seemed to be nothing left for Dora to do but to concentrate all
the overflowing tenderness and devotion of her heart upon her lover,
and to brood and pine over his long-continued silence. She never
doubted that he had written to her, for the mail-service to and from
the gold regions was notoriously unreliable in those days, and she
was by no means the only one who looked in vain for letters thence.
At last she could bear the suspense no longer. The spring had opened
early, and a party in a neighboring town was to start for the diggings
by the middle of April. This party, in which were already included
two women, Dora resolved to join. Once let her reach that indefinite
region denominated "the mines," and she felt the most unquestioning
faith in her ability to find her lover.

And so once more the dauntless girl set out upon that long and tedious
journey of three thousand miles. Not many weeks passed before the
inevitable homeward-bound stragglers began to be encountered, and of
these Dora eagerly sought information concerning the object of her
quest.

"Bridge? No, marm," was almost uniformly the reply to her first
question in that direction.

"He was sometimes called Posey," she would then suggest; and at last
she found a man who acknowledged that he knew Posey. "He was at
the Buny Visty in Carter's Gulch at last accounts," this individual
informed her, but he omitted to commit himself as to the nature of
Posey's occupation. "Wife, p'r'aps?" he observed, incidentally.

"No, sir," said Dora.

"Sister?"

"No."

"Ah! Well, he's a stocky chap, that Posey, and ought to make his
fortune in the mines, if anybody could. But nobody can't--take my word
for't. Look at me!"

He was a spectacle indeed. The retrogressive Doctor Hanchett had
been quite an exquisite in the matter of apparel compared with this
tatterdemalion. With Dora's companions he was less reticent concerning
the