the Senator had wounded for his wife.  Before the Senator came in from the mine Hearts-ease heard the other miners’ wives talking of this, and how this man had boasted he would kill him.  She knew her husband was unarmed, having left his gun behind him that day because his second one was broken, and he would not leave her with none in the shack; quite unsuspiciously he returned with his comrades, and went into a bar to have a drink on his way back, as he often did to hear the news of the day.  And when Hearts-ease could not find him on the road, she ran down there, carrying the gun and the baby, to warn him and give him his weapon, and got into the saloon just as the desperado and his following entered by another door.

The enemy called out to the Senator that he meant to “do for him this time,” and as Hearts-ease rushed up to her husband with no fear for herself, holding out the gun, the brute fired and shot her through the heart, and she fell forward with Lola, dead in the Senator’s arms.  “And then the heavens turned to blood,” he said, “and I took the gun out of her dead clasp and killed him like a dog.”  But by this time, Mamma, I really was crying so I could hardly hear what he said.  No wonder his eyes have a sad look sometimes, or his hair is gray.

We neither of us spoke for a while.  I could only press his strong kind hand.  Then he recovered his voice, and went on as if dreaming:  “It all came true what she prophesied.  I am rich beyond her uttermost fancyings, and I’ve sampled pretty well most all the world, but I’ve always tried to do the things she would have liked me to do.  I guess you’ve wondered at my dandy clothes, and shiny finger nails.  Well, it’s just to please her—­if she’s looking on.”  Wasn’t he a man worth loving, Mamma!  And of course she did not mind dying for him, and how happy and glad she must be now, if she is “looking on.”  Somehow the whole story has made me so long for Harry, that I have been perfectly miserable all the evening, and if you think you could cable to him and tell him to come back I think perhaps you might, and I will say I am sorry.

Your affectionate daughter,

ELIZABETH.

SAN FRANCISCO.

San Francisco.

Dearest Mamma,—­I have just got a letter from Jane Roose about having heard of Mrs. Smith’s being on the ship with Harry.  Has it come to your ears, too?  What on earth could a woman like that want to be going to Zanzibar for, unless she was hunting some man who was going to hunt lions?  I call it most extraordinary, don’t you?  And probably that is what these papers meant by saying he had gone to India with a fair haired widow, and I was so silly I never suspected a thing.  Well, if he thinks it will annoy me he is very much mistaken.  I don’t care in the least, and am amusing myself awfully with Gaston, and you can tell him so; and as for cabling to him, as I think I asked you to in my last letter,