Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which gradually died away.  As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours:  “Piney, can you pray?” “No, dear,” said Piney, simply.  The Duchess, without knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney’s shoulder, spoke no more.  And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.

The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them.  Feathery drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and settled about them as they slept.  The moon through the rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the camp.  But all human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.

They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp.  And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned.  Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each other’s arms.

But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees, they found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife.  It bore the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand: 

Beneath this tree
lies the body
of
John Oakhurst,
who struck A streak of bad luck
on the 23D of November, 1850,
and
handed in his checks
on the 7th December, 1850.

And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.

MIGGLES

We were eight, including the driver.  We had not spoken during the passage of the last six miles, since the jolting of the heavy vehicle over the roughening road had spoiled the Judge’s last poetical quotation.  The tall man beside the Judge was asleep, his arm passed through the swaying strap and his head resting upon it—­altogether a limp, helpless-looking object, as if he had hanged himself and been cut down too late.  The French lady on the back seat was asleep, too, yet in a half-conscious propriety of attitude, shown even in the disposition of the handkerchief which she held to her forehead and which partially veiled her face.  The lady from Virginia City, traveling with her husband, had long since lost all individuality in a wild confusion of ribbons, veils, furs, and shawls.  There was no sound but the rattling