"What good is it?" he said.
"Oh!" the missionary at length said to him, "Valentine, you, who are so strong, are now weak as a child; grief lays you low without your striking a blow in self-defence. You forget, though, that you do not belong to yourself."
"Alas!" he exclaimed, "What is left me now?"
"God!" the priest said sternly, as he pointed to the sky.
"And the desert!" Curumilla exclaimed, extending his arm toward the rising sun.
A flame flashed from the hunter's black eye; he shook his head several times, bent a glance full of tenderness on the tomb, and said, in a broken voice—
"Mother, we shall meet again."
Then he turned to the Indian chief.
"Let us go," he said, resolutely.
Valentine was about to commence a new existence. His further adventures will be described in a new series of stories, each complete in itself, commencing with the "The Tiger Slayer," and the characters running through the "Gold Seekers," the "Indian Chief," and the "Red Track."