A fortnight passed, and Ashton Ashleigh read this letter by the flickering light of a smoking kerosene lamp. Siwash lay on a buffalo robe in a corner, reading; and near him sat Le-Le, making a cunningly wrought moccasin. The wind outside was rising. The ice-laden chains and pulleys of the idle ferry-boat resounded to its attack like a thousand-stringed Æolian harp. Suddenly, under a louder and more furious blast than any that had preceded it, the ice-incrusted cables snapped asunder, and the frozen boat crashed through the ice blockade, her timbers breaking as if made of withes. Ashleigh opened the door and peered out into the moonlight. White clouds rolled over and over one another, and the stark white landscape seemed alive with flurrying snow. “Good-bye, Green River Ferry,” he said. “This is a fitting finale to my cherished hopes. Oh, Jean! my bonnie Jean! To think that the end should be like this!” * * * * * “The ferry-boat is gone, Le-Le,” he said the next morning. “Your ransom price has been paid, and you are, as you know, a slave no longer. I am going away. Take good care of Le-Le, Siwash, my boy; and take good care of yourself also.” The girl’s English vocabulary was too meagre to admit of much expostulation in speech, but her wailing was blood-curdling as she knelt at his feet, alternately embracing his knees and tearing her hair. “I have made a terrible mistake, poor girl,” he cried, tearing himself away, “but I meant only to be kind. It was my dream to set you free and take you with me to—to—her. But now I see that it will be impossible!” Le-Le, still wailing, prepared his breakfast. Siwash brought his mules to the door, in stolid obedience to orders, his face as expressionless as flint. “The white man’s heart is hard, like the hoof of the buffalo,” he said to Le-Le in her native tongue. “You mistook his kindness for love. But never mind. You’ll get over it.” * * * * * Two days of steady travel through the solitudes brought Ashleigh to the lodgings of the post-trader, Joseph Ranger, alias Addicks. “Your wife,” John had written to his brother, “has come to visit us at the Ranch of the Whispering Firs, as my girls have named our donation claims, to hold which we have pooled our issues, and have filed upon them as individuals. My family are charmed with her. Do join us here at once. Take a donation claim near to one or more of ours. Forget bygones. And, best of all, go with me this winter, by the Isthmus route, to the dear old home. Do say yes, Joe, and we may all be happy yet.” “Halloa!” cried Ashleigh, as he alighted at the post. “Well,” cried Joseph Ranger, as he opened his canvas door; “it’s Ashleigh. Come right in! You’re the very man I wanted to see.” A savory odor of hot biscuits and frying ham greeted the nostrils of the benumbed and hungry wayfarer. “This supper smells good, Mr. Addicks.”