Year: 1867







A log cabin on the western plains,
with SHOWS that drift and drift around
1T. Overhead u gray, dark sky, that
seems, if you gaze up into it long
enough to get the spirit of its expires
sion, to hold some agony of despair or
death.


| There is, however, a kind of wild,
strong life in the scene that lies be-
neath-spreading itself away from the
window Of that lonely log cabin, stand.
ing there as solitary witness of hu
man lite in the midst of the wild,
white dreariness OF the plains.


Perhaps the little girl feels this. She
is not old enough to consciously think
1.-THE little girl with thin, sallow
face, which somehow suggests fever
and ague, fattened up against the pane,
looking out with a singular alert wist
fulness over the wide, white plains and
through the gushing gusts of snow,
until her gaze touches the gray hori.
Zon afar off


The winds como in furiously from
the east, like tho roaring Of tides, or
the trampling Cf battalions of armed
men, and dash down with fierce roar
and cry on the thick clouds of snow
flakes, and hunt and drive them back
and forth, and toss them up in white
hocks, and tear them apart, and ride
back and forth over the plains, making
OF the air one vast trumpet through
which they shrek their chorus of vic
tory.


Inside the cabin, mans voice asks
suddenly-'Bessie, child, has nobody
come in sight yetY A mans voice, /
said, and yet struck through and
through with some pain and hollow
ness which made you feel that its
words were nearly ended.


NO, father, answered the little girl,
drawing her thin face away from the
window, there is nothing to be seen
but the binding snow


'Hark ! don't you hear somethin g|
said the hollow voice, breaking in here,
sharp, hungry, impatient


No, father; the wind blows and
blows; that is ALL


The tones were those of girl, but
there was nothing in the low, dreary
voice that was at all like that of girl.
hood. Then the speaker turned to the
fire, placed some fresh wood on the
embers, and came back to her watch
by the window; dreary work enough
for any age, but doubly so to one
whose life had not covered its four
teenth summer.


The room had a generally comfort
less expression. Yet there was not, af
ter all, so much lack of material
as want Of care and arrangement dis
cernable throughout the apartment.


On tho bed in one corner lay the
owner of the log cabin. One look in
to the shrunken face, the hollow eyes
all lying in that shadow of ashy pallor
and you would have been certain the
man had laid himself down to die, and
that the one guest who comes sooner
or later over all thresholds had come
now to that lonely log cabin out on the
western plains.


None could know it better than Jo-
siah Keep, as he lay there, with the
winter storm bowling without, and the
years of his life coming up one after
another, and standing with their sol
emn, reproachful faces before him.


For this mans life had not been a
good one. | cannot go into the details
here Of selfishness which had marred,
and passion which had defiled his days;
but the end had come now, and the
hard, strong, fierce will had bowed it
self at last before the solemn voices of
conscience echoing amid all the tumult
of his soul, as it glared face to face
with death.


There was one deed of Josiah Keeps
life which somehow troubled him more
than all the others, and from it he in
some sense dated the commencement
of his wrong career, although the self
willed, reckless, passionate boyhood
and youth had ripened into the hard,
selfish, defiant manhood.


Here, too, it is sufficient to say that
he had overreached his partner in a
manner which the law conld not TAX Q
hold of; he had, TO save his own for
tune, completely wrecked the others,
and the wrong had not ended there
1t had been the means of driving his
partners young wife--a fine souled,
sensitive woman--to madness and TO
her grave.


Afterward Josiah Keep had prosper