The expedition proved an ill-starred one, and Lorman perished in it in some unrecorded encounter, passing out of history like an unknown breath. It seems fated that the paths to all great goals shall be strewn with the wrecks of untimely and irregular enterprises, unfortunate but prophetic precursors of the final triumphs. It has been so in the case of the many premature and wrongful attempts to grasp for the flag of the United States those backward and waiting territories destined, perhaps, as the harmonies of Providence weave themselves out, spontaneously to shoot into the web of the completed unity of the Western Continent. Many a gallant and romantic fellow, many a reckless brawler, many a coarse and vulgar aspirant, many a crudely dreaming and scheming patriot, half inspired, half mad, has fallen a victim to those numerous semi-piratical attempts at conquest which have in the eyes of some flung on our flag the lustre of their promise, in the eyes of others, planted there the stains of their folly and crime. But if there be a systematic plan or divine drift and purport in history, every one of these efforts has had its place, has contributed its quota of influence, has left its seed, yet to spring up and break into flower and fruit. Then every life, buried and forgotten while the slow preparations accumulate, will have a resurrection in the ripe fulfilment of the end for which it was spent. Meanwhile, the brief and humble memory of Lorman Forrest sleeps with the nameless multitude of pioneers the forerunning line of whose graves invites the progress of free America all around the hemisphere.