rough. She grew wild,
looking forever at bare mountain sides simmering in the sun by day, and
at night over their tops up to the piercing stars. A constant anxious
fever burnt in her blood, that the cold night air could not quench,
though she often left her couch to let it blow chilly over her, in her
loose night robes. Then she fell really ill.

Sitting by her bedside, Jack said: "If I could sell my mine!" And she
had answered, "let the mine go, Jack, and let us go home. Nothing is
gained by stopping in this dreadful place."

Then Mr. Hastings had replied to her, "I have no money, Alice, to go
home with, not a cent. I borrowed ten dollars of Earle to-day to buy
some fruit for you."

That was the last straw that broke the camel's back. By night Mrs.
Hastings was delirious, and Dr. Earle was called.

"She has a nervous fever," he said, "and needs the carefullest nursing."

"Which she cannot have in this d----d place," Mr. Hastings replied,
profanely.

"Why don't you try to get something to do?" asked Earle of the
sad-visaged husband, a day or two after.

"What is there to do? Everything is flat; there is neither business nor
money in this cursed country. I've stayed here trying to sell my mine,
until I'm dead broke; nothing to live on here, and nothing to get out
with. What I'm to do with my wife there, I don't know. Let her die,
perhaps, and throw her bones up that ravine to bleach in the sun. God!
what a position to be in!"

"But you certainly must propose to do something, and that speedily.
Couldn't you see it was half that that brought this illness on your
wife; the inevitable which she saw closing down upon you?"

"If I cannot sell my mine soon, I'll blow out my brains, as that poor
German did last week. Alice heard the report of the shot which killed
him, and I think it hastened on her sickness."

"And so you propose to treat her to another such scene, and put an end
to her?" said Earle, savagely.

"Better so than to let her starve," Jack returned, growing pale with the
burden of possibilities which oppressed him. "How the devil I am to save
her from that last, I don't know. There is neither business, money, nor
credit in this infernal town. I've been everywhere in this district,
asking for a situation at something, and cannot get anything better than
digging ground on the new road."

"Even that might be better than starving," said Dr. Earle.

Jack was a faithful nurse; Dr. Earle an attentive physic