The next morning as the Schoolmaster came by, with the little girl sliding up close to his legs, on the opposite side from the cabin, the Widow with a face of unutterable sadness was outside trying to tie a piece of something black to the door-latch.
The man lifted his hat, and came reverently and slowly forward.
There was no need of saying anything now. He understood it all, and after assisting her in silence to do the office of respect for the dead within, he took the little girl's hand again in his, turned to go, took a few steps forward, and then stopping and turning around, again lifted his hat and said softly to the Widow:
"I will stop at the saloon and send up some of the boys to take charge of the body and prepare it for the grave."
"No," sighed the Widow in a voice that was scarcely heard above the beating of her heart, "No, George," and she came slowly and calmly up to the man and stood there with her white face lifted close into his. "No George, you will go back to the house, and get your mother and your sister to come and help me now at the last. For it is a woman that lies dead there in that little vine-covered cabin."
The woman had kept the woman's secret. She had given her life as it were for the life of another. But now that all was over; the whole story was to be written in the single name on the little granite gravestone. It was the name of Nancy Williams.
THE END.
PUBLICATIONS OF Jansen, McClurg & Co.
CATON.—A Summer in Norway, with Notes on the Industries, Habits, etc., of the People, the History of the Country, the Climate and Productions, and of the Red Deer, Reindeer, and Elk, by Hon. J. D. Caton, LL.D.