"For this day, my father, you have waited many years. I shall not delay. I will not fail you." From a skin sack he filled the small lamp with oil and lighted its wick with a splinter of blazing coal. He set it where its feeble light shone on the face of the dead. Lifting the corpse, he composed its limbs and wrapped it in the great white pelt of a polar bear, tying it with many thongs. Before he hid from view the quiet features he stood back with folded arms and bowed head. "I think he would have wished this," he whispered, and he sang softly that grand old hymn which has sped so many Christian soldiers from their battlefield. "Nearer, My God, to Thee," he sang in a subdued, melodious baritone. From a shelf of books which hung on the wall he reached a leather-covered volume. "It was his religion," he muttered: "It may be mine," and he read from the book: "_I am the resurrection and the life, whoso believeth in Me, even though he die--_" and on through the sonorous burial service. He dropped the book within the folds of the bearskin, covered the dead face, and made fast the robe. Although the body was of great weight, he shouldered it without apparent effort, took the lamp in one hand, and passed through the panel in the wall. Within the bowels of the cliff a large cavern had been hollowed in the coal. In a far corner a gray boulder had been hewn into the shape of a tombstone. On its face were carved side by side two words: "Anne" and "Stephen." At the foot of the stone were a mound and an open grave. He laid the body in the grave and covered it with earth and loose coal. Again he paused, while the lamplight shone on the tomb. "May you rest in peace, O Anne, my mother, and Stephen, my father. I never knew you, my mother, and, my father, I knew not who you were nor who I am. I go to carry your message." * * * * * He rolled boulders onto the two mounds. The opening to the cave he walled up with other boulders, piling a heap of them and of large pieces of coal until it filled the low arch of the entrance. In the cabin he made preparations for a journey. One by one he threw on the fire books and other articles within the room, until little was left but skins and garments of fur and an assortment of barbaric weapons of the chase. Last he dragged from under the cot a long, oaken chest. Failing to find its key, he tore the lid from it with his strong hands. Some articles of feminine wearing apparel which were within it he handled reverently, and at the same time curiously; for they were of cloth. Wonderingly he ran his fingers over silk and fine laces. Those he also burned. From the bottom of the chest he took a short, brown rifle and a brace of heavy revolvers of a pattern and caliber famous in the annals of the plainsmen. With them were belt and holsters.