For an instant she beamed upon him with a look of unutterable love. Then, as if attracted by a familiar voice, she turned her gaze toward the only space in the tent where no one was standing.
"Yes," she cried in clear, ringing tones; and her brightening eyes grew strangely full of eager expectation. "I 'm coming! Tell grannie I'll be ready for her when she comes to heaven!"
"Leave me alone with my dead!" said the bereaved husband, as he cleared the tent of other occupants and threw himself upon the ground beside the still and cold and irresponsive body. No longer animated by the invisible power that for forty years had thrilled it with the mystery of being, it lay with closed eyes and folded hands beneath its drapings ot white, upon the heavy, furry buffalo robe, placed beneath the inanimate form by the husband's loving hands.
Through all the years cTf John Ranger's sturdy manhood, that self-defiying life had been his, devoted with all its tenderness to his interests and those of the sweet pledges of their love, for whose sake he must now live on, alone.
Months after, when the remnant of the Ranger family had reached the land "where rolls the Oregon," a letter came to the bereaved husband and father, by way of the Isthmus of Panama, bringing tidings of the dear greatgrandmother's transition; and John Ranger, still an agnostic, awaiting the proofs of immortality that had never come to his physical senses in such a manner as to be recognized, wandered out alone among the whispering firs, and cried in bitterness of spirit: "Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"
"I ought to have known better than to bring you out here to die in the wilderness, Annie darling!" cried the grief -stricken husband, caressing the attenuated fingers.
