Governor Denham's wounds were not so slight as Lester hoped, but they were not dangerous, and when, to prevent my aunt's alarm for my safety (for the news of "the break" spread rapidly through the town), I parted from my friends before nightfall and rode back to the hotel as I had come, I left three of the most excitedly grateful and happy people behind me I had ever seen. "I suppose it is no use to urge it further, Ruth darling," said her husband as we parted, "but I really wish you would go to San Francisco with our friend and let Nellie have a chance to forget the shock she has endured. You need the change too, if you would ever think of yourself." "It is because I do think of myself that I prefer to remain where I am happiest," said Ruth decidedly. "As for Nell, she is a pioneer child, and will soon be as merry and fearless as ever. But, Jenny dear, we owe you an apology for the novel dinner-party we have given you. When you come back it will seem like a frightful dream, and not a reality, we shall all be so quiet and orderly again." As we stood alone in the hall, from which every sign of the late terrible conflict had been removed save the bloodstains that had sunk into the stone beyond the power of a hasty washing to obliterate, Ruth said in a low whispering tone that was full of pent-up feeling, "I told you that Lester was a murderer condemned for life, Jenny, but there were extenuating circumstances in connection with his crime. That is not his name we call him by: I do not even know his real one, but I am convinced that he belongs to educated and reputable people, and that he suffers the keenest remorse for the wild life that led him so terribly astray. He became desperately attached to a Spanish girl, who was married as a child to a brutal fellow who deserted her, and she thought him dead. She and Lester were to be married, I believe, when the missing husband reappeared and tormented them both. The girl he treated shockingly, and it was in a fit of rage at his abuse of her that Lester killed him; but appearances were all against the deed, and he was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced for life. Edward is kind and discriminating, and he pitied him. Lester told his story freely, and my husband gained his lasting gratitude by taking care of the wretched girl and paying her passage in a vessel bound for her native town in Mexico. The only favor we could show him here was to separate him from the wretches in the common prison by making him a 'trusty' or prison-servant. He understood our motive in doing so, and was very thankful and most reliable. What we owe him to-day you know: he makes light of it, protesting that he only picked up Nell from the gulch where the escaped convicts had dropped her on their way to the hills; but he cannot lessen the debt: it is too great to be calculated even."