Meynell rushed impatiently on, his eyes fixed upon the hope-inspiring lights. "Hold! hold!" cried Atawa, vainly trying to restrain him, "one step more, and you are lost!" But she spoke too late: ere the echoes of her cry had ceased, Meynell's soul had gone to its last account. He had approached too near the edge of the precipice: the snow gave way beneath his feet; a moment more, and he lay a bleeding corpse upon the ice-bound rocks below. Atawa's despairing shrieks brought out the inmates of the huts. They were obliged to use force, to separate her from the lifeless body; she rent her hair, and tried to lay violent hands upon herself, long refusing all sustenance. From her incoherent words, they at length gathered something of her story, and the probable fate of the rest of her tribe. Some of the woodmen immediately started in hopes of rendering assistance to the unhappy Montaignais; they found six of the families on their way, in the last stage of starvation, and saved them, but all the rest of the tribe perished in that barren land. The following night the woodmen dug a hole, and laid the mangled corpse to rest. It was so light and emaciated, that a child might have borne it thither. They then heaped some snow over it, and, threading their way by torchlight through the trees back to their huts, left it without a blessing. So there he sleeps--unwept, save by the poor Indian girl! his fate for years unknown to those who had wondered at his gifts and beauty. His bones lie whitening in that distant land, no friendly stone or sod to shelter them from the summer sun and wintry frost. Let us yet dare to hope, that in those last dark days of toil and suffering, where life and death were in the balance, He, whose love is infinite, may have made the terrible punishment of this world the furnace wherein to melt that iron heart, and mould it to His ends of mercy. WAS RUBENS A COLOURIST?