The patient's face had a radiant expression, her eyes sparkled vividly, and a light pink flush gilded her cheeks; she seemed supremely happy. The warriors, sharing in the grief of their adopted brother, were crouching silently near the hut.

It was a magnificent evening; the breeze that was beginning to rise gently agitated the leaves; the sun was setting in a flood of vapour, iridescent with a thousand changing tints.

The sick woman uttered at times broken words, which her son religiously repeated.

At the moment when the sun disappeared behind the snowy peaks of the mountains, the dying woman rose, as if impelled by an irresistible force, she took a calm and limpid glance around, laid her hands on the hunter's head, and uttered one word, with an accent full of strange melody —

"Farewell!"

Then she fell back – she was dead.

Instinctively all present knelt. Valentine bent over his mother's body, whose face retained that halo of heavenly beauty which is the last adornment of death; he closed her eyes, kissed her several times, and pressing her right hand which hung out of the hammock in his, he prayed fervently.

The whole night was spent in this way, and no one left the spot. At daybreak Father Seraphin, aided by Curumilla, who acted as sacristan, read the service for the dead. The body was then buried, all the Indian warriors being present at the ceremony.

When all had retired, Valentine knelt down by the grave, and though the missionary and the chief urged on him to leave it he insisted on spending this night also in watching over his dead mother. At daybreak his two friends returned; they found him still kneeling and praying; he was pale, and his features were worn; his hair, so black on the eve, had white hairs now mingling with it.

Father Seraphin tried to restore his courage, but the hunter shook his head sadly at all the priest's pious exhortations.

"What good is it?" he said.

"Oh!" the missionary at length said to him, "Valentine, you, who are so strong, are now weak as a child; grief lays you low without your striking a blow in self-defence. You forget, though, that you do not belong to yourself."

"Alas!" he exclaimed, "What is left me now?"

"God!" the priest said sternly, as he pointed to the sky.

"And the desert!" Curumilla exclaimed, extending his arm toward the rising sun.

A flame flashed from the hunter's black eye; he shook his head several times, bent a glance full of tenderness on the tomb, and said, in a broken voice —

"Mother, we shall meet again."

Then he turned to the Indian chief.

"Let us go," he said, resolutely.

Valentine was about to commence a new existence. His further adventures will be described in a new series of stories, each complete in itself, commencing with the "The Tiger Slayer," and the characters running through the "Gold Seekers," the "Indian Chief," and the "Red Track."