When we met at his door, Mr. McGlashan introduced us.  We bowed, not as strangers, not as friends, nor did we shake hands.  Our thoughts were fixed solely on the purpose that had brought us together.  He invited us to enter, led the way to that room which I had been told he had swept and furnished for the occasion with seats for five.  His first sentence made us both forget that others were present.  It opened the way at once.

“Mr. McGlashan has told me that you have questions you wish to ask me yourself about what happened in the mountain cabin.”

Still standing, and looking up into his face, I replied:  “Yes, for the eye of God and your eyes witnessed my mother’s last hours, and I have come to ask you, in the presence of that other Witness, when, where, and how she died.  I want you to tell me all, and so truly that there shall be no disappointment for me, nor remorse and denials for you in your last hour.  Tell it now, so that you will not need to send for me to hear a different story then.”

I took the chair he proffered, and he placed his own opposite and having gently reminded me of the love and respect the members of the Donner Party bore their captain and his wife, earnestly and feelingly, he told me the story as he had related it to Mr. McGlashan.

Then, before I understood his movement, he had sunk upon his knees, saying solemnly,

“On my knees before you, and in the sight of God, I want to assert my innocence.”

I could not have it thus.  I bade him rise, and stand with me in the presence of the all-seeing Father.  Extending my upturned hand, I bade him lay his own right hand upon it, then covering it with my left, I bade him speak.  Slowly, but unhesitatingly, he spoke: 

“Mrs. Houghton, if I had murdered your mother, would I stand here with my hand between your hands, look into your pale face, see the tear-marks on your cheeks, and the quiver of your lips as you ask the question?  No, God Almighty is my witness, I am innocent of your mother’s death!  I have given you the facts as I gave them to the Fallon Party, as I told them at Sutter’s Fort, and as I repeated them to Mr. McGlashan.  You will hear no change from my death-bed, for what I have told you is true.”

There, with a man’s honor and soul to uncover, I had scarcely breathed while he spoke.  I watched the expression of his face, his words, his hands.  His eyes did not turn from my face; his hand between mine lay as untrembling as that of a child in peaceful sleep; and so, unflinchingly Lewis Keseberg passed the ordeal which would have made a guilty man quake.

I felt the truth of his assertion, and told him that if it would be any comfort to him at that late day to know that Tamsen Donner’s daughter believed him innocent of her murder, he had that assurance in my words, and that I would maintain that belief so long as my lips retained their power of speech.

Tears glistened in his eyes as he uttered a heartfelt “Thank you!” and spoke of the comfort the recollection of this meeting would be to him during the remaining years of his life.