to give him crumbsorum,
Lord bress de Lamb--glory hallelugerum!
Lord bress de Lamb!"

At the end of this interminable refrain, drawn out in a youthful nasal
contralto, Fleming knocked. The girl instantly appeared, holding the
ring in her fingers. "I reckoned it was you," she said, with an affected
briskness, to conceal her evident dislike at parting with the trinket.
"There it is!"

But Fleming was too astounded to speak. With the opening of the door
the sunbonnet had fallen back like a buggy top, disclosing for the first
time the head and shoulders of the wearer. She was not a child, but
a smart young woman of seventeen or eighteen, and much of his
embarrassment arose from the consciousness that he had no reason
whatever for having believed her otherwise.

"I hope I didn't interrupt your singing," he said awkwardly.

"It was only one o' mammy's camp-meetin' songs," said the girl.

"Your mother? Is she in?" he asked, glancing past the girl into the
kitchen.

"'Tain't mother--she's dead. Mammy's our old nurse. She's gone to
Jimtown, and taken my duds to get some new ones fitted to me. These are
some o' mother's."

This accounted for her strange appearance; but Fleming noticed that
the girl's manner had not the slightest consciousness of their
unbecomingness, nor of the charms of face and figure they had marred.

She looked at him curiously. "Hev you got religion?"

"Well, no!" said Fleming, laughing; "I'm afraid not."

"Dad hez--he's got it pow'ful."

"Is that the reason he don't like miners?" asked Fleming.

"'Take not to yourself the mammon of unrighteousness,'" said the girl,
with the confident air of repeating a lesson. "That's what the Book
says."

"But I read the Bible, too," replied the young man.

"Dad says, 'The letter killeth'!" said the girl sententiously.

Fleming looked at the trophies nailed on the walls with a vague wonder
if this peculiar Scriptural destructiveness had anything to do with his
skill as a marksman. The girl followed his eye.

"Dad's a mighty hunter afore the Lord."

"What does he do with these skins?"

"Trades 'em off for grub and fixin's. But he don't believe in trottin'
round in the mud for gold."

"Don't you suppose these animals would have preferred it if he had? Gold
hunting takes nothing from anybody."

The girl stared at him, and then, to his great surprise, laughed instead
of being angry. It was a very fascinating laugh in her imperfectly
nourish