Blaisdell and Rivers were tried on the charge of murder, the most important witnesses for the prosecution being Everard Houston and Morton Rutherford; the latter testifying as to the nature of the final and fatal dispatch sent on that eventful day, in which he was corroborated by the telegraph operator of the Silver City office, who had been found and secured as a witness, and who verified Rutherford's statements regarding the message, but at the same time cleared Mr. Blaisdell from all connection therewith; the message having been sent by Rivers in Blaisdell's absence, whether with his knowledge and consent, they were unable to ascertain. The charge against Blaisdell was therefore dismissed through lack of evidence, while in Rivers' case, a verdict was returned for manslaughter, and he was given the extreme limit of the law, imprisonment for ten years. Blaisdell was then speedily arraigned for a new trial on the charge of embezzlement, the date on which his case was set for hearing being the same as that upon which his partner in crime was to be transferred to the state penitentiary. On that morning, however, the guard on going to the cell occupied by Rivers, found him just expiring, having succeeded in smuggling into his cell a quantity of morphine, how or when, no one could ascertain. He left a letter in which he stated that no state penitentiary had ever held him, or ever would, but that "as the game was up" he would give them a few particulars regarding his past life. He gave his true name, the name of a man who, twenty-five years before, had been wanted in the state of New York for a heavy bank robbery and murder. For years, under an alias, he had belonged to a gang of counterfeiters in Missouri, but upon the discovery and arrest of the leaders of the band, he had assumed his present alias and had come west. As Blaisdell took his place that morning in the prisoner's box, he was a pitiable object. Haunted almost to madness by the awful fate of his associate, confronted by an overwhelming array of evidence, furnished by Houston, Van Dorn and Lindlay, including also a deposition of Guy Cameron's, taken in his sick-room, his own abject and hopeless appearance bore the most damaging testimony against him. His case was quickly decided, his sentence being for seven years. After the trial, Morton Rutherford and Van Dorn returned at once to the camp, and a day or two later, when business affairs had at last been satisfactorily adjusted, Mr. Cameron and Houston returned, bringing with them Mr. Whitney and Lindlay, for a visit of a week among the mountains, before the entire party should return east. It was now early in the fall. Already the nights were frosty, but the days were royal as only early autumnal days among the mountains can be. Every breath was exhilarating, each inhalation seeming laden with some subtle elixir of life.