after many days, the current should subside, and I should be able to drag myself once more to shelter, what help could there be from the slight provision that still remained to me? what help from any quarter, indeed? The air was still warm-there was only that one thing in my favor; perhaps for a day or two I might not freeze to death. And yet, that very warmth was all the while swelling the stream at my feet, and more surely cutting off every chance of escape. As I lay stretched out within a foot of the bank, I could plainly see that the floods descending from the Sierras were constantly, more and more, heaping up the waters below me; could almost mark it with closed eyes, from the increase of their angry uproar as they surged past me, every moment rising still higher, until, at last, the surface ran foaming past within a foot of the level of the bank. Would it still gather height, until it swept across the snow-bed where I lay, and carried me onward and downward in the deadly rush? Why, that, in truth, would be mercy to me so I could not resist thinking; for there would be merely the one struggle of a minute, and after that, rest. Under the impulse of that perception, I felt tempted to drop myself at once into the flood, and so meet my doom, and have done with it. But still, life is sweet, and even in the most desperate circumstances hope will sometimes utter its faint whisperings of possible succor. Therefore, I still lay motionless, afraid to take the desperate needed action for relief from the world and life, and awaiting, in all the calmness that I could muster, the worst that Fate might do to me.

Slowly the hours loitered onward; noon, afternoon, and again the coming of evening, with the full, unclouded moon beaming down and showing the whole scene with almost the brilliancy of day. To me, an age of hopeless waiting; pain and hunger assailing me with ever increasing intensity. Meanwhile, the stream, which had spread into a river, had ceased in its rise, though it had not yet begun to fall. But now its waters became sprinkled here and there with driftwood, the surface far above having reached

some point of level from which a deposit of fallen timber had been gathered up and swept along. Here a rotting log; again a clump of brushwood, bound together with interlacing branches, and so tossing onward merrily. Once, a small red-wood cedar, which had fallen into the stream from an undermined bank, came into sight, floating along like a drifted boat. Its roots and one or two remaining branches held it in position, so that it did not roll from side to side, but glided onward with a certain dignity of position, sometimes for an instant stopping to tear its way into the nearest bank, carrying with it thence deposits of turf and earth, then drifting along more swiftly, yet all the while remaining unmoved in its center-so again, passing on, until finally lost to view behind a lower bend. Then, too late, I realized that perhaps there had been a chance of rescue thrown away. If, when the cedar had passed in its course so close to me, I had had the wit to roll myself off the bank and upon the trunk, and there, grasping one of the outstretched branches secure myself from being washed away, might I not safely have been carried down, miles away perhaps, but all the same into some lower mining settlement, where, being seen, I could be rescued?

I would wait another chance-one might come again. And so I strained my gaze over the seething water. There came more brushwood and small logs; after two hours waiting, another torn-up cedar, but sweeping to the other side of the stream, not for an instant tarrying in its course. After that, for a long time, only an unbroken expanse of water, as though the whole deposit had been at last swept away, and there was nothing left to be gathered in. So for many long hours, until at last the morning dawned again

that Christmas morning that I had so eagerly anticipated.

Alas! it was no day of joy or revelry to me. The friends who might offer congratulations and gifts were now thousands of miles away. And yet, there was one gift still within my reach the gift of death, with its cessation from all suffering. Why should I not

hasten to accept it, and so rest in peace? I could not but know that at last the time had come for me to end the struggle. For nearly two days I had been lying upon the bank, and watching the gathering of the flood at my feet. My only chance of rescue-if it it could be called a chance—had been passed by, and I felt that none other would be given. Soon the water would fall-already it seemed to be receding; but were it to diminish to a mere brook, never again could I find strength to cross it. And now a cold blast began to sweep from the north, betokening an end to the winter thaw. It brought new pain to my shattered limb; hunger was gnawing me; there could be no rescuing hand within many miles; at my side, for sole companionship, with open eyes staring upward at the sky, lay the dead girl, and she once more changed, and into a kind of terrible repulsion, as though even there as elsewhere in the world, all suggestions of beauty must be taken away, leaving nothing but deformity before mine eyes on every side. The face had fallen away, the rounded cheeks again become thin, the staring eyes grew dim and unloving, the complexion had lost its momentary freshness, and once more assumed the yellow hue of death. Nothing was left that could give to any one the suspicion that here lay anything else than the half starved boy that he had assumed to be. It was as though there had been that transient revival into the other beauty, so that I might for some subtle purpose penetrate the long concealed secret, and then a relapse into deformity, so that the world, which I was about to leave, might present no claim of any kind to tempt me longingly to cling to it. These terrors were all that could remain with me thenceforth, until death might choose to bring relief. Would it be a sin for me to hasten that hour?

The night before I had striven to repress that thought. But why should I now delay ? The flood at my feet would give me almost instant peace; while on the cold bank might be many more days of hopeless agony. Then slowly, and with pain, I twisted myself closer to the brink and gazed down. A single mo

ment more, and the work would be done, and then would come rest forever. Could it be wrong to yield to the temptation? The sun gilded the water with brightness-there was even invitation in the purling and lapping of the waves. Again I twisted myself a little closer; there was now only an inch nearer for me to move, and the work would be done. And I tried to mutter a prayer.

"Heaven will surely pardon me," I faintly whispered in that last moment, before preparing to let myself be swept away upon the torrent, uttering strange minglings of prayer and quaint conceit, as I looked first at the blazing sky, and then let my glance fall for an instant upon the dead body at my side. "What else is there left for me to do? Must I remain and starve, fainting all the while with pain? And what, after all, is my life, that I should longer try to save it? If there were any hope at all—even the faintest

but here I am, so far away from succor, so wounded and helpless. Charley, you have won after all, for you will be last at the Bar. Perhaps you will never be found at all, and so will always lie here and keep guard over the gold, while I-I, far away-God forgive

As I painfully raised my head to take one last look at the sky and earth, what was it that I saw slowly working its way through the gap in the hills, half a mile off-large, white, and rounded, swaying heavily from side to side, but all the while pressing steadily onward? Behind it another and similar object, and yet a third. Faintness came over me with the thought that the sight was all too good to be true, and that in my dying moments my eyes were being deceived with a false appearance, as of a mirage. But, little by little, the rounded white objects, still swaying toilsomely from one side to the other, worked themselves toward me, and I knew that I could not be deceived, that I was looking upon no unsubstantial vision. They were real; they were substantial - those three white-topped wagons, long belated on their way from Independence, and now struggling forward to reach some settlement before the sharper intensity of the winter

should set in. Painfully I raised myself still further; for want of any other signal, snatched the blanket from the poor dead girl's body, and waved it with all my strength; then fell back fainting.

When I recovered, I found myself stretched at full length in one of the wagons, upon which the loading had been adjusted to make for me as level a bed as possible. I was in pain, but it was something to have recovered my senses, and to know that I had been rescued from what had seemed certain death. As I now groaned aloud in my return to consciousness, the pleasant, kindly face of some one walking beside the wagon looked in, and greeted me with a smile of sympathy.

"All right again, pard?" said the man. "We found you almost gone, but I am a bit of a surgeon myself, and have bound up your knee as well as I could, and in a day or two we may reach some place where it can be better done. Don't speak now, if it hurts you; but I will tell you how I think the whole thing happened, and you can answer if I am not right. You had stayed too long at the mine-you and the boy-and were trying to get out of it. That was so, wasn't it?"

"And the boy he was weaker than you, and so he died first, only a little earlier than you would have done, if we hadn't happened to come along. Was he any relation to you?" "None."

"Poor little fellow; it was hard on him to die so, wasn't it? And I say, we buried him just where he lay. That was right, wasn't it? We had to do something; and it was as pretty a spot as one could find for miles around, perhaps. It wasn't as hard work as you would have thought, for the ground was kind of soft and loose, as though it had been turned over before, though, of course, that wasn't likely. We couldn't consult you about it, you know, for you were

I turned my head away, and tried again to sleep, and through the rest of that journey, once in a while, at long intervals, I managed to do so. And so we plodded on, until after three days we reached a settlement, and I was enabled to be lifted down and lie by, awaiting in quiet whatever cure could be effected.

What now remains for me to tell? That everything was done for me that kindness could suggest, but that, though my life was saved, my injuries were too severe to be entirely repaired, this scarcely needs recital. And now I must always remain crippled, and am very poor; doomed to go through life, hopeless of anything better than to linger on, a useless wreck. But there was the gold, you say? And why should I not have taken it, needing it so much? For what, after all, was Charley to me, that I should have made the sacrifice for her?

I had

All through that winter, when I lay suffering upon my back, I thought about that treasure hidden in the lonely grave at Lowber Bar; and it tempted me in my dreams, as well. I saw it lie there useless; gleaned up by me, it would mean competence and a restoration to my home and kindred. given my word that I would not molest that grave; should I always be able to resist? Were it only Mark Sintley who lay buried there, I knew that I would succumb. But how-I reflected-could I ever have the heart to disturb poor little Charley, who in her restful repose so close to him whom, in spite of every indignity and wrong, she had loved, seemed with her faithful presence to be tenderly guarding him, and all the while, with pleading eyes, to be gazing up at me, in trustful reminder of my promise to her?

When the spring came, and I had painfully got again upon my feet, I started for Lowber Bar. I did not then know what I might be tempted to do when there. I only knew that, as heretofore, I was being drawn by an invisible impulse to the grave, and must submit. When there, then the drama

I

might in some manner complete itself. found the way there was long and lonely. It had become known that the mine was a failure, and few or none had gone back to it in the spring. The trail had all but grown over, and when I reached the top of the hill, from where I could look down into the valley, I saw only desolation. The old trenches were there, no longer worked, and in the middle of the plain only the two tents that Charley and myself had abandoned six months before. And after a moment I wound my way to the lonely grave; there, while gazing down upon the green turf, to resolve upon my final course.

And there, God help me! came to me the grievous shock-such as I had never felt before! There was no longer any greencovered grave, but only a gaping trench extending for many yards upon either side, and dug down clear to the gray foundation rock! Where had the despoilers laid Charley and her cruel lover? I could not tell. I shall never know. It was enough that they had been removed and cast into some nameless grave, and that the treasure which they had thought to guard had all been torn from their violated place of rest.

Gazing into the plain, I distinguished a

single figure moving in front of my old tent, and drawing nearer, saw that it was the Dutchman who had helped me to dig the grave. That man of the lacklustre eye and stolid expression, who had seemed so stupid and unregarding; he it was who had shown himself the most crafty and patient of us all. For he, without a start or tremor of the eye, had seen evidences of the gold, and believing that he alone held the secret, had cunningly gone away, knowing that the treasure would not diminish or melt away during his absence, and that it only remained for him to hold it in memory and bide his time. There was nothing that I could do—he had won the day and left me penniless. And so, not revealing myself, I turned away from Lowber Bar forever.

I have said that Christmas Day was not for me a scene of festivity and joy. But why, after all, should I think reproachfully of it? Each of those incidents that led up, one by one, to misfortune and to the final misery of all, had been of the preceding days. It was Christmas Day that, in the midst of misery and hopelessness, dawned upon me with rescue and safety. Is not this something for which I should look back upon it with gratitude?

IF San Francisco should today be afflicted by the visit of some epidemic, with which her citizens should find themselyes unable to cope except through aid from other sources and from other people, an appeal to France for trained nurses might bring from the Congregation des Sœurs de St. Vincent de Paul, in Paris, or from some similarly organized community, volunteers, who within less than three weeks from the time that the call was made, might find themselves engaged in the work to which they had been summoned. The voyage across the ocean and the transit across the continent would scarcely cause the sensation of fatigue. The change in the modes of life of the Sisters would scarcely be greater, than if they had been called from Paris to some sister city in France. Their knowledge of the events occurring daily in Paris would probably be fully equal in San Francisco to what they would have in the Provinces. Their journey would occasion no alarm to themselves nor to their friends. No fears of pirates nor of robbers would intimidate them. No doubts about the character of the place to which they were going would harass them. They would leave one field of Christian work for another, where they would be gratefully received and kindly treated; and beyond the perils incident to their vocation, would know no cause for fear in making such a journey.

How different the circumstances which surrounded the little band of Ursulines, which, but a little over a century and a half ago, founded the convent at New Orleans. How difficult it is to realize the changes which have taken place in so brief a time. It is only when we chance upon some bit of history, like the Voyage of the Ursulines, that we are able by juxtaposition to bring out the strong lines of contrast between the conditions of now and then.

The adoption by the Company of the Indies of New Orleans as their head-quarters,

in 1722, gave that place its first vitality; and very soon after this event the colonists in the growing village felt the need of a hospital for their sick, and of a school for their children. In September, 1726, the Company of the Indies entered into a contract with the Ursulines of Rouen, whereby these nuns undertook to send out six sisters, who would establish a school in the infant city, in which they would act as teachers, and who would also perform the duties of nurses in the hospital which the company was to build. In October, the nuns and novices who were to expatriate themselves in the performance of this humane service assembled at Paris, at the residence of the Ursulines of St. Jacques. They were detained at Paris until the eighth of December, when they started for Lorient, where they were to embark for Louisiana.

Marie Madelaine Hachard, whose letters to her father furnish the materials for this sketch, was admitted to her novitiate the day she left Rouen, and took the veil while the little company waited at the convent at Hennebon. Accompanying the first letter which she forwarded from New Orleans, was a Relation of the voyage, to which she signed her name as if she were the author. A Relation closely resembling this has been attributed to the Lady Superior of the convent. The suggestion has been made that "Hachard de Saint Stanislas," as she signs herself, acted as the amanuensis of her Lady Superior, and therefore felt at liberty to enclose the Relation to her parents.

The pages of the letters of this young girl are full of earnest devotion for the religious work to which she has consecrated her life. Her regrets at the painful and permanent separation from her friends find compensation in the thought of the glorious work in. store for her. She knew that she was to endure hardships and encounter dangers; that her labor was to be among negroes and Indians; but it may well be doubted if in the