ly thrilling.

When the snow, which for some time had been falling, compelled him to
break off and guide me to a sheltered place from which I could make my
own way back again, he stopped his horse and said, "Now you see a man
who has made a devil of himself! Lost! Lost! Lost! I believe in
God. I've given Him no choice but to put me with 'the devil and his
angel.' I'm afraid to die. You've stirred the better nature in me too
late. I can't change. If ever a man were a slave, I am. Don't speak
to me of repentance and reformation. I can't reform. Your voice
reminded me of -----." Then in feverish tones, "How dare you ride with
me? You won't speak to me again, will you?" He made me promise to
keep one or two things secret whether he were living or dead, and I
promised, for I had no choice; but they come between me and the
sunshine sometimes, and I wake at night to think of them. I wish I had
been spared the regret and excitement of that afternoon. A less
ungovernable nature would never have spoken as he did, nor told me what
he did; but his proud, fierce soul all poured itself out then, with
hatred and self-loathing, blood on his hands and murder in his heart,
though even then he could not be altogether other than a gentleman, or
altogether divest himself of fascination, even when so tempestuously
revealing the darkest points of his character. My soul dissolved in
pity for his dark, lost, self-ruined life, as he left me and turned
away in the blinding storm to the Snowy Range, where he said he was
going to camp out for a fortnight; a man of great abilities, real
genius, singular gifts, and with all the chances in life which other
men have had. How far more terrible than the "Actum est: periisti" of
Cowper is his exclamation, "Lost! Lost! Lost!"

The storm was very severe, and the landmarks being blotted out, I lost
my way in the snow, and when I reached the cabin after dark I found it
still empty, for the two hunters, on returning, finding that I had gone
out, had gone in search of me. The snow cleared off late, and intense
frost set in. My room is nearly the open air, being built of unchinked
logs, and, as in the open air, one requires to sleep with the head
buried in blankets, or the eyelids and breath freeze. The sunshine has
been brilliant to-day. I took a most beautiful ride to Black Canyon to
look for the horses. Every day some new beauty, or effect of snow and
light, is to be seen. Nothing th