ON THE PRAIRIE.

Time swept on. The entire scene of our story changes from the city, with its crowds of active people, its whirl of gay life—its sorrows and its joys—to a broad, undulating prairie in the far West. It was not a vast ocean of waving grass, flat and monotonous, sweeping greenly to the horizon, but a succession of prairies, out of which ranges of heavily wooded hills lifted themselves in picturesque beauty, leaving plenty of space for the union of one beautiful sea of grass with another.

These hills gave life and change to the scene, which was an unspeakable relief to the traveler, who tires of an eternal stretch of verdure, as one wearies of an ocean in its perpetual calm. One of these prairies was almost entirely surrounded by a chain of broken hills. Along the side a river, of considerable depth and power, swept with a broad, graceful curve, adding the soft chime of waters to the rush and sough of winds when they swayed the long grass to and fro, in such undulating waves as stir the ocean after a storm.

In the curve of this river a dozen log houses were clustered, and one or two dwellings of buff stone taken from a quarry in the hills, had just beep completed. Indeed, all the dwellings in the place were new—some of them so recent in their construction that tufts of green leaves might still be found clinging to the logs, and close by the stone houses the ground was choked up with a litter of broken stones and half-dried beds of mortar, bits of lath, and blocks of refuse timber, around which the thrifty grass was still growing, as if nothing could suppress its exuberance.

Spite of this newness and litter, nature was so munificent that the village looked rural and lovely as you approached it. The thrifty wild vine, trampled down by the workman, had started up again, and, creeping across the loose stones, seized upon the logs and were climbing toward the eaves of the cabins, scattering them with the sweetness of their blossoms as they grew.

Across the prairie, there was a broad opening in the hills, interlinking one sea of grass with another, and through this, bearing in a direct line for the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Railway ran, having first crossed the plain, cleaving it in two with a belt of iron, and filling all the solitude with the hum of busy workmen.

Out of this railway, which now links two vast oceans together, chaining down mighty ranges of mountains in its progress, this village, or town, had sprung into existence, as many another thriving place had done, while the great works stretched themselves toward the mountains.

Some keen lover of nature had chosen the site of this coming town. The shadows of the hills almost swept over it. The river wound around it like a silver bow. It was uplifted above the level plain, and overlooked a sea of the tallest and most luxuriant grass that ever tangled itself into gorgeousness with the vivid coloring of wild flowers, abundant as itself, and bright as the tints of a coming sunset. At nightfall the scene was more than beautiful. Then the hills cast down their shadows upon the river, which sent up sparkles of light here and there as the dying sun shed flashes of scarlet or gold upon it, and on the cabin windows with their clinging flowers, as if determined to light up the prairie with a double glory.

Indeed, at this hour, it was well that the village should be illuminated, for then the sweetest season of domestic life commenced. The owners of these cabins came home from their work, brought back from a distance on the road they were building, eager for a few hours of domestic comfort with the loved ones who had followed them into those western wilds, scarcely giving a thought to the sacrifice they were making.

This hour of rest had fallen upon the village. The trees over the topmost hills seemed set on fire by drifting flame-tints let loose by the setting sun. The river was partly in the shadow partly flashing with gleams of gold, but the inner curve was all one cool green shadow, in which a boat drifted downward with the current, forming a beautiful object in the stillness.

In this boat two persons were seated, a young girl, in the first bloom of life, and a man of twenty-five, or thereabout, whose handsome face bore an impress of matured thought not usual to that early age. He was a fine specimen of manhood, tall and athletic in person, intellectual in the expression of his face, and earnest in everything he said or did.

The girl, though scarcely yet in the perfection of the rare beauty which a year or two more would give to her tall person and sweet face, was wonderfully light and graceful as she sat in the little boat, trailing one hand in the water and listening, with downcast eyes, to that sweet story, which is full of witchery now as it was when Adam whispered it to his wife in the bowers of Paradise.

All at once the young man flung down his oars, and took the hand which lay supinely in the girl's lap, between both his.

"You are silent—you do not believe me, Dora."

She lifted her eyes from the shelter of their long lashes, gave him one look, and veiled them again; but over her face flashed a smile so sudden and brilliant that he uttered an exclamation of delight, and, lifting her hand to his lips, left it rosy with his kisses.

"Then you do love me, Dora?"

She looked up with pleasant mischief in her smile.

"William, who was the girl I saw you with that first night at the theatre?"

The young man started, and released her hand gently from his clasp. She looked at him in surprise. The color had left his face, and a thrill of pain seemed to pass through him.

"I am sorry you asked me just now, Dora, because an hour like this should be all joy; but I should have told you about this a little later, and will answer you now. That person was my wife."

"Your wife!"

A storm of crimson rushed over Dora's face. It seemed as if the word had passed through her heart like a bullet.

"It grieves me. I did not intend to be so abrupt. Forgive me," pleaded the young man, greatly troubled by her agitation.

"Your wife—and you loved her?" cried out that young girl, so new to pain that she thought it was killing her.

"Yes, Dora, I loved her. Forgive me, but I did."

"As you love me—better than you love me. How dare you, sir, talk as—as you have done? Take me home—take me home!"

"Not till you have listened to me—not till you have forgiven me for that which was no crime, at least against you."

"I—I cannot forgive you. It was a deception. I thought you so good—so honorable, so—so——"

Then Dora suddenly lifted both hands to her face, and burst into a passion of tears.

Sterling strove to imprison her hands and wipe away her tears, but she resisted him, and began to sob.

"Dora," he said, very gently, but with firmness, "you must not be angry with me for a state of things that happened long before I knew you. If you could but understand how unhappy these tears make me, I am sure you would not be so ungenerous."

"But you loved her—you married her."

"Dora, give me your hands—there, look in my face, and tell me if it is a deceitful one. Ah! you are almost smiling. Thank you, dear. How lovely you are with the tears on those long lashes. Do you think that I ever did or ever could love any one as I love you?"

"Are you sure? She was wonderfully pretty. Her eyes so tender, her neck so white—that girl your wife? Oh, William, I hate her."

Do not say that, Dora—she is dead."

Dora gave a little shiver, and began to cry again, but more quietly than before. At last she turned to him with a smile of heavenly forgiveness on her face and said, in a sweet, womanly fashion,

"Now tell me all about it."

Well, he told her the whole story—at least all that he knew of it; how his profession had thrown him in the way of Constance Hudson; how he had compassionated her loneliness, and admired her genius, untamed and rude as it was, helped her—pitied her—loved her, and, in the end, secretly married her. Then he told of the long journey he had taken in order to claim his wife openly, and the mournful news that had met him at her father's door. This was the reason of his secrecy. Death had put its seal upon his marriage, and he had shrunk from speaking of it to any one especially since his heart had gone out so entirely to another.

Dora heard all this with mingled curiosity and pain. But she was, after all, a sensible girl. By degrees her tears abated, and I am not certain that she did not exalt the young man into something like a hero of romance in her mind. But the subject had brought too many sad memories upon Sterling, and the hour, which opened so brightly, closed in gentle sadness. He could not be entirely happy when the thoughts of beautiful, bright Constance Hudson had been so unexpectedly thrust upon him.

Eudora had unconsciously dashed the sweetest moments of her own life with painful shadows, when she mentioned the beautiful girl who had, at first, only excited her curiosity, and, of late, since she had learned to love William Sterling, a vague jealousy. With one careless question, she had brought out the young man's secret, and thus dashed her own joy, for a moment, to the ground. But we soon reconcile ourselves to the inevitable. Dora was too wise and right-hearted for more than a passing pang when she learned that her own pure, first love, must accept a second place in the life she had hoped to fill entirely. It wounded her self-love, and hurt her pride, at first; but that soon passed away. Sterling had, in fact, committed no wrong against any one, save by the secrecy which sprung out of intended kindness. After all, this married life of his amounted to scarcely more than a dream. How could she remain jealous of a woman in her grave? Yet Dora would far rather this marriage had never been.

If Sterling, also, felt unhappy, as his boat glided slowly adown the river, he only gave proof of it by a quiet sadness, which settled upon them both; and so these two lovers drifted on through the purple shadows almost in silence.

They came back, at last, and walked into the village just as the stars came out, and fire-flies were filling the prairies with diamond-sparks. They paused before one of the new stone houses. Dora turned her face to the starlight as she hesitated to open the door. William held out his hand. His face was pale in that dim light, and he looked in her eyes entreatingly, as if he feared that some hard thought still lingered in her heart against him.

"Dora!"

"Good-night," she said, kindly, bending toward him; "good-night. We will never think of her again."

"God bless you, Dora! Good-night."

Sterling turned away, and walked past his mother's cabin, wanting solitude. Dora stood in the darkened hall of her father's house, and watched him tenderly, weeping a little, but more from happiness than pain.