He went to the corner where the supplies were stored and rifled them for more ship’s biscuit and a wedge of cheese, a delicacy which Fletcher had brought from Hangtown on his last visit, and which he carefully refrained from offering to the hungry emigrants. Coming back with these he drew out another box and spread them on it before her. She looked on in heavy, silent surprise. When he had finished he said: “Now--fall to. You want food as much as anything.” She made no effort to eat, and he said, disappointed: “Don’t you want it? Oh, make a try.” She “made a try,” and bit off a piece of cracker, while he again retired to the supply corner for the tin cup and the whisky. He tried to step softly so as not to wake the child, and there was something ludicrous in the sight of this vast, bearded man, with his mighty, half-bared arms and muscular throat, trying to be noiseless, with as much success as one might expect of a bear. Suddenly, in the midst of her repast, the woman broke down completely; and, with bowed head, she was shaken by a tempest of some violent emotion. It was not like her tears of an hour before, which seemed merely an indication of physical exhaustion. This was an expression of spiritual tumult. Sobs rent her and she rocked back and forth struggling with some fierce paroxysm. Moreau, cup in hand, gazed at her in distracted helplessness. “Come now, eat a little,” he said coaxingly, not knowing what else to suggest, and then getting no response: “Suppose you lie down on the bunk? Rest is what you want.” “Oh, I can’t go on,” she groaned. “I can’t. How can I? Oh, it’s too much! I can’t go on.” He was silent before this ill for which he had no remedy, and she wailed again in the agony of her spirit: “I can’t, I can’t. If I could only die! But now there’s the baby, and I can’t even die.” He got up feeling sick at heart at sight of this hopeless despair. What could he suggest to the unfortunate creature? He felt that anything he could say would be an insult in the face of such a position. “Oh God, why can’t we die?” she groaned--“why can’t we die?” As she said the words the sound of approaching voices came through the open door. Her husband’s struck through her agony and froze it. She stiffened and lifted her face full of an animal look of listening. Moreau noticed her blunt and knotted hands, pitiful in their record of toil, as she held them up in the transfixed attitude of strained attention. “What now?” she said to herself. The pioneer, Fletcher and Bessie came slowly round the corner of the cabin. Bessie looked sleepily anxious, Fletcher lazily amused. As Moreau stepped out of the doorway toward them he realized that they had come to some decision. “Well,” said the man, “we got to travel.” “You’re going on?” said Moreau. “How about the wagon?” “We’re goin’ to leave the wagon, and I’ll come back for it from Hangtown. It’s the only thing to do.” “And the horse?”