in blue. He hurried toward them in
real trepidation. He could not bear to see the lamb actually in the
company of the wolf. The three met on the edge of the clearing; Christie
was the first to speak.

"I've brought you Eliza," he said, in a steady, matter-of-fact voice,
something like Eliza's own. "Her ma's dead, 'n you can have her 'f you
want her. She thinks you'd like her."

"What do you mean?" asked Simon, his voice clouding over, so that it was
hardly audible. "Can I hev her for my own?"

"Yes; that's the proposition! 'N there's a hundred dollars in her pocket
which is all the capital I can raise to-day. I can do the funeral on
tick. No; I won't try to get her away from you. She ain't my style."

Simon was stooping down with his eyes on a level with Eliza's.

"Say, Eliza," he asked, "would you like to be my little girl?"

"Yes," quoth Eliza.

"And come and live with me all the time?"

"Yes!" and she put out a little hand and touched his face.

"She won't be no great expense to you," said Christie.

Simon stood up and cast a significant glance about him.

"I guess if I let them prospectors in on my land," he said, "there won't
be no great call for economizing!"

The two men stood a moment facing each other with the same
half-defiant, half-puzzled look they had exchanged at that other
meeting, not so long ago. Christie was the first to break the silence.

"There wa' n't never much love lost between Eliza and me," he remarked,
as if pursuing a train of thought that had been interrupted. "After the
two boys died of the shakes, down in the Missouri Bottoms, both in one
week, I kind o' lost my interest in kids. But I'd like to know she was
in better hands than mine, for her mother's sake."

"Eliza," said Simon, in a tone of gentle authority which the Lame Gulch
Professor rarely assumed. "Eliza, give your pa that money, and tell him
to bury your ma decent."

Christie took the money.

"Well," said he, "I guess you're correct about the prospectors. They're
right after your claim!--Good-bye Eliza."

"Good-bye," said Eliza, digging the heel of her boot into the bed of
pine needles.

Yet Christie did not go.

"I'll send her duds up after the funeral," he said. "And her ma's things
along with them. And, say!" he added with a sort of gulp of
determination, while a dark flush went over his face. "About that
_door-mat_, you know. It wasn't respectful and--_I apologize_!"

With that, Christie strode down t