“I wish to mark the spot,” Benson explained, and for an hour or more after the Mormon left him he toiled at this task, and by the end of that time had raised a rude pyramid of loose stones; then he mounted his horse and gazed about him for the last time. He looked at the bleaching animal bones; at the circle on the bare earth where the fire had been; then his glance wandered over the plain; level, solitary, devoid of life. Miles distant on either hand the barren sands yielded to the barren rocks, and the rocks rose to the eternal snows. Off to the west, in the full glory of the August sun, was their camp of the night before. It was hidden by a strip of timber, and out of this timber a single thin ribbon of blue smoke ascended from the wasting embers of their fire. And here the end had come to Stephen Landray and his companions; on this hill, in this solitude. Here, in the shelter of their wagons they had fought and fallen. He almost saw the savages on their galloping ponies, as they swept nearer and nearer, and then the end—swift, brutal, sufficient. Suddenly there came to him a quick, shocking sense of joy. “God forgive me!” he muttered, aghast at the feeling. “God forgive me! I mustn't think of it—yet; I'm only sorry for him; only sorry for her. I must keep myself out of this!” CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE ON his return to Salt Lake, Benson wrote to Virginia. This letter he intended to carry to St. Louis to post, where he expected to wait for a few days; but his pen faltered, and more than once he left his chair to pace his dimly-lighted room. He wished to spare her, but he wished her to know that Stephen Landray was dead. Yet, when he had finished his letter he felt the result to be pitiful enough, with its poor attempt at consolation; and his face showed pale and haggard in the faint light of the sputtering candle on the table before him. At last, impressed by the utter inadequacy of his commonplaces, he abandoned the idea of writing Virginia then, and wrote Judge Bradly instead. From St. Louis Benson went to Portsmouth by boat; at Portsmouth he stowed himself away inside the coach in which he was to complete his journey. He found himself seated opposite a tall, dark man of unmistakably clerical aspect who was swathed in shawls and travelling blankets beyond any need that the weather occasioned. The other occupant of the coach, there were but the two beside himself, was a little brown man, with shrewd, squinting eyes, a grizzled beard, and closely-cropped bullet-head. He wore wide, bell-mouthed trousers, and a short jacket with large bone buttons; at his neck was carelessly knotted a flaming kerchief; while perched upon his head was a small canvas cap of strange pattern. Benson regarded this person with frank wonder; a wonder the man himself seemed both to understand and enjoy, for his shrewd eyes twinkled with amusement.