The embarrassing position now occupied by the widow had never been anticipated. If her strength could have overcome the resistance of the hard-frozen earth that would enable her to say to the Indian deity of the wilderness, 'With pious sacrilege a grave I stole,' her force, and that of her infant children united, was insufficient for the removal of the body. Widowed destitution was never more complete. There was her dead husband on one side, and her weeping and distracted babes on the other. A single night of bitter wakefulness and watching was the last that she ventured to linger out in her dreary abode; and it seemed to her an eternity of darkness. Early on the morning after the death of her husband, the lone widow packed up a supply of provision, and, with her children, mounted, left her cabin and unburied husband to search for a neighbor. She carried the rifle with her, in order to make fire at her encampments on the journey. On closing the door on the house of mourning, the distress of parting was made doubly agonizing by an inquiry of one of the children, made in these words: 'Are you going to leave daddy?' The first day's route lay up through the valley, and along the bank of the creek on which her dwelling was situated; and she was therefore guided by it. After the first night's encampment, where she had been surrounded with wolves, and nervously agitated by their howlings, and occasionally the startling scream of a panther, she resumed her journey. The little family of wanderers had marched a short distance from their place of lodging, when all knowledge of their route failed. After wandering sometimes in one direction, and then retracing their steps and striking off at some other point of the compass, the bewildered mother encamped for the second night. The next morning the half-distracted traveller determined to retrace her steps. Two days brought her back to the dreary and desolate abode. The cabin was surrounded with a snarling pack of wolves, which were contending for the remains of her little flock of sheep. These were scared away by the faithful dogs that had followed the family. The interior presented the frightful evidence of mortality. A cat had made horrid inroads on the face of the deceased, and was still feeding on the mutilated corpse! The necessity of burial was in no manner diminished by this horrid spectacle. The afflicted woman scarcely knew why she had returned. She passed another long winter night in her house of mourning, hovering with her little brood around the cheerless hearth.