ON THE TRACK.

A month or more after they had laid that gentle boy among the prairie flowers, one of the construction trains brought two strangers to that cluster of shanties, who, from their appearance, were quite as unlikely to find business along the Pacific line as any travelers that had ever appeared there.

One of these persons was a tall, spare man, with the dress and appearance of a clergyman; the other, a young woman, who must have been beautiful once, but was then a wreck, and nothing more. Pale, emaciated and feeble, she clung to the man's arm with the heavy, downward weight of entire weariness, as they proceeded to the rude building where Rhoda Weeks had first met young Sterling. This building had two apartments on the ground floor—one which answered as a bar-room, the other was for general family use. The female traveller was led into this latter apartment, where she sat down wearily on a stiff, wooden chair, and leaning back rested her head against the wall, moaning faintly as if in pain.

As the woman sat thus, with her face to the light, the door connecting with the bar-room opened, and the good-natured face of old Mr. Weeks looked in. He held a sugar-crusher in one hand, and a pitcher in the other, which he was intending to fill with water from a pail which stood just within the door; but the moment his eyes fell on this woman the pitcher fell, with a crash, to his feet, and grasping the sugar-crusher with both hands, he cried out,

"Goodness mercy! who is this? Who is this?"

The young woman opened her wild blue eyes, and brighter than they had ever been in health. When she saw little Weeks so stricken with amazement, holding on to the sugar-stick as if it were a pillar of strength, a look of comical amazement came over her thin features, and she laughed outright one of those hollow, unearthly laughs, that have no real cheerfulness in them.

"Why, little Weeks," she said, holding out her hand, "Is it really you? How your hair stands up! What on earth frightens you so?"

Weeks stared at her an instant with his mouth half open, then turned and fled into the bar-room, where he met young Sterling just coming in with a surveying party. Weeks seized him by the arm.

"Come in—come in here, and tell me if it is her or not!" exclaimed the little man, dragging Sterling forward. "Look there!"

Sterling did look, and saw Constance, his wife, sitting before him, pale and thin, the ghost of her former self. He did not speak; he did not move, but stood like a statue in the door-way, with all warmth and life stricken out of him.

As for the woman, she attempted to rise, struggled with herself wildly a moment, and fell back insensible.

Then Mr. Hudson came into the room, pushing the young man on one side in his anxiety and distress.

"Is she dead?"

The voice was so cold and hollow which asked this question, that it startled the old man. He looked up, terrified and recognized his daughter's husband.

"No, she is not dead. It is that which we came to tell you."

Sterling looked wildly from the old man to that face which appeared so like death. All at once the horror of his position came over him, and he cried out,

"Oh, my God! My God! what have I done to deserve this?"

"Hush, young man, she is coming to. Have patience, and find some compassion for her in your heart. If she has sinned, the God of heaven alone knows how she has suffered!"

Sterling did not answer, perhaps he did not hear, for his soul was absorbed by the shock of that woman's appearance. At last he spoke.

"She is alive—my wife, in this place, among all these people. See, they are looking through the door, wondering about us. There is a room up stairs. Come!"

Sterling took the insensible woman in his arms, and carried her up the ladder-like steps which led to the upper story. The rough frame-work of the stairs trembled under him, but he carried his burden firmly, and laid her on a bed neatly made up in the unplastered garret.

The pressure of those strong arms, brought the woman back to consciousness. When she saw her husband bending over her, a faint smile came across her face, and she lifted her arms toward him like a weary child in sight of its mother. A thought of Dora came upon the young man with such a pang of agony, that he shrunk back groaning. Those feeble arms dropped heavily, and an answering sob, dry and hard, broke from the woman. She was fully conscious now, stung into life by terrible pain.

"Forgive me. I forgot the gulf—the awful, black gulf that lies between you and me. Yet if you could have kissed me without knowing—only once without knowing."

She muttered this in a broken undertone, and to him the words lacked connection.

"Constance," he said, struggling manfully for calmness, "you are here and alive. I mourned for you—God only knows how I mourned for you!"

"Did you? Oh, Sterling! did you really mourn?"

Constance started up in bed, put back the still bright and glorious waves of hair from her temples, and searched his features eagerly for some vestige of the love and grief he spoke of. She saw only a hard, set face, cold as marble that covers the dead. All the ardent youthfulness seemed to have gone out from it forever. He was glad of an opportunity of turning away from those imploring eyes.

"I have a wagon here," he said, addressing Hudson, "and a home not far off. She is my wife; I will take her there." Then he thought of Dora, covered his face with both hands, and would have wept, had the pain at his heart been less.

"She will not go," said Hudson, shaking his head mournfully. "It was not for that we came in search of you."

"Let me speak with him—let me tell him," said Constance, sitting upright, with that sudden strength which springs from desperation. "Go away, father! let me be alone with him once more; this once, William, I will never ask it again. Sit down here. Will you take my hand? See how thin and wasted it is; yours is so healthy, yet it trembles. My coming terrified you; but take comfort, I am dying. Cannot you see that a very little while will end it all?"

Sterling did not answer, but his hand closed on the fragile thing in his, and held it firmly. After all, she had been his wife, and he had loved her.

"Sterling, they told me that you were dead, killed in a massacre by the Indians. I believed it, and married another man."

Sterling dropped her hand, and sat on the side of the bed, staring at her dumbly. He could not comprehend the thing she told him.

"You cannot believe it. No wonder—no wonder! Still it is the solemn truth; but for that falsehood my love would have saved me. I was coming to you. We tried to get away from him."

"Constance! Constance! What is this you are saying?" cried the young man, taking her hand again, and wringing it till she moaned under the pain. "Tell me clearly, and be brief, what all this means."

Constance clung to his hand. "Let it be—let it be! This clasp gives me strength. I want to tell you everything—that is what we came for; but give me a glass of wine, brandy; you will find it in that basket."

Sterling found a traveling-flask in the basket she pointed out, and, mixing some of the brandy it contained with water, gave it to her.

"Now sit by me," she said, holding out her hand, while a hot flush came into her cheeks, and her eyes shone like stars. "Sit here; I am strong as a lion now, and I will tell you everything."