The intelligence of his death was kept in mercy from her, through the kindness of friends, who hoped to break it to her gently. This thoughtful and sympathetic purpose was marred by the unthinking act of a young man, who had been sent with a carriage to convey her to the hotel where her husband's body lay. As he rode up he shouted, "Thomas Barber is killed!" His widow half-caught the dreadful words, and rushing to the door cried, "Oh, God! What do I hear?" Seeing the mournful and sympathetic faces of the bystanders, she knew the truth and filled the house with her shrieks. When they brought her into the apartment where her husband lay, she threw herself upon his corpse, and kissing the dead man's face, called down imprecations on the heads of those who had bereaved her of all she held dear. The prairies of the great West resemble the ocean in more respects than in their level vastness, and the travelers who pass over them are like mariners who guide themselves only by the constellations and the great luminaries of heaven. The trail of the emigrant, like the track of the ship, is often uncrossed for days by others who are voyaging over this mighty expanse. Distance becomes delusive, and after journeying for days and failing to reach the foot-hills of the mountains, whose peaks have shone to his eyes in so many morning suns, the tired emigrant is tempted by the abounding richness of the country to pause. He is one hundred miles from the nearest settlement. Beside a stream he builds his cabin. He is like a voyager whose ship has been burned, leaving him in a strange land which he must conquer or die. Such was the situation of that household on the prairie of Illinois, concerning whom is told a story full of mournful pathos. We should note, in passing on to our story, one of the dangers to which prairie-dwellers are exposed. They live two or three months every year in a magazine of combustibles. One of the peculiarities of the climate in those regions is the dryness of its summers and autumns. A drought often commences in August which, with the exception of a few showers towards the close of that month, continues, with little interruption, throughout the full season. The immense mass of vegetation with which the fertile soil loads itself during the summer is suddenly withered, and the whole earth is covered with combustible materials. A single spark of fire falling anywhere upon these plains at such a time, instantly kindles a blaze that spreads on every side, and continues its destructive course as long as it finds fuel, these fires sweeping on with a rapidity which renders it hazardous even to fly before them.