ne, tearing from it a huge
semi-circle, which she held in her cheek while exclaiming:

"Murder! hain't that good, though? D'yuh eat them things ev'y day? Yuh
looks hit! You're a real fine-lookin' feller--mos' ez good-lookin' ez
Bill."

"Who is Bill?" asked Gilman, much interested in this, his first
conversation with a genuine savage.

"Bill? he's muh pard, an' muh brother, too. I come down hyuh tuh git
him a drink o' water, but a hain't foun' a spring yit."

"No, there isn't one in several miles," said Gilman.

"Hyuh!" she cried. "Lemme git out." . . . And she was out, with the
bound of a deer. "You g'long," she said; "a'm sorry a rode this far
wi' you. You'll larf 'bout muh bar foots, an' this hyuh rag o' mine,
wi' them po' white trash an' niggers. Whar you fum, anyhow? You hain't
a Fuginia feller. A kin tell by yo' talk. You called roots 'ruts'
jess now, an' yuh said we'd 'sun' be whar them other fellers be. Whar
you fum?"

"From Massachusetts," said Gilman.

"S'that another langidge fuh some name a knows?"

"No--it's the real name of another State."

"Well, hit's 'nuff tuh twis' a body's tongue, fuh life, so a done
blame yuh s'much fuh yo' funny talk. Mawnin'." And she began to swing
herself upon a great lichen-crested boulder by the roadside. . . . . .

Gilman was naturally curious as to the type of the young barbarian
whom he had met on his drive to Black Creek, and, during a pause in
his work, he told a young fellow named Watkins of his adventure, and
asked him to what class the girl belonged.

"I reckon, sir, she was a sang-digger," said Watkins, laughing.
"They're a awful wild lot, mostly bad as they make 'em, with no more
idea of right an' wrong than a lot o' ground-horgs."

"But what is a 'sang-digger'?" asked Gilman, more and more curious.

"Well, sir, sang, or ginseng, ez the real name is, is a sorter root
that grows thick in the mountains about here. They make some sorter
medicine outer it. I've chawed it myself for heartburn. It's right
paying, too--sang-digging is, sir; you ken git at least a dollar a
pound for it, an' sometimes you ken dig ten pounds in a day, but
that's right seldom. Two or three pounds a day is doin' well. They're
a awful low set, sir, sang-diggers is. We call 'em 'snakes'
hereabouts, 'cause they don't have no place to live cep'in' in winter,
and then they go off somewhere or ruther, to their huts. But in the
summer and early autumn they stop where night ketches 'em, an