You see I'd heerd from one o' those fellars that a woman like unto her had been picked up in Texas and brought on yere, and that mebbe she was somewhar in Californy.

I was that foolish--and that ontrue to her, all the while knowin', as I once told you, Mr.Key, that ef she'd been alive she'd bin yere--that I believed it true for a minit! And that was why, afore this happened, I had a dream, right out yer, and dreamed she kem to me, all white and troubled, through the woods.

At first I thought it war my Sadie; but when I see she warn't like her old self, and her voice was strange and her laugh was strange--then I knowed it wasn't her, and I was dreamin'.

You're right, Mr.Key, in wot you got off just now--wot was it?
Better to know nothin'-- and keep the old thoughts unchanged." "Have you any pain ?" asked Key after a pause.
"No; I kinder feel easier now." Key looked at his changing face.

"Tell me," he said gently, "if it does not tax your strength, all that has happened here, all you know.
It is for HER sake." Thus adjured, with his eyes fixed on Key, Collinson narrated his story from the irruption of the outlaws to the final catastrophe.