n his lap. Then he pulled a
chair up beside the old man and took the child's thin wrist in his
hand. He shook his head and said:

"No use, Bishop--better lay her on the bed--she can't live two
hours."

Then he busied himself giving her some drops from a vial.

"When you get through with your remedy and give her up," said the old
man slowly--"I'm gwinter try mine."

The Doctor looked at the old man sorrowfully, and after a while he
went out and rode home.

Then the old man sent them all to bed. He alone would watch the
little spark go out.

And Bud alone in the yard saw it all. He knew he should go
home--that it was now past midnight, but somehow he felt that the
Bishop might need him.

He saw the moon go down, and the big constellations shine out
clearer. Now and then he could see the old nurse reach over and put
his ear to the child's mouth to see if it yet breathed. But Bud
thought maybe he was listening for it to speak, for he could see the
old man's lips moving as he did when he prayed at church. And Bud
could not understand it, but never before in his life did he feel so
uplifted, as he sat and watched the old man holding the little child
and praying. And all the hours that he sat there, Bud saw that the
old man was praying as he had never prayed before. The intensity of
it increased and began to be heard, and then Bud crept up to the
window and listened, for he dearly loved to hear the Bishop, and amid
the tears that ran down his own cheek, and the quick breathing which
came quicker and quicker from the little child in the lap, Bud heard:

"_Save her, oh, God, an' if I've done any little thing in all my po'
an' blunderin' life that's entitled to credit at Yo' han's, give it
now to little Shiloh, for You can if You will. If there's any credit
to my account in the Book of Heaven, hand it out now to the little
one robbed of her all right up to the door of death. She that is
named Shiloh, which means rest. Do it, oh, God,--take it from my
account if she ain't got none yet herse'f, an' I swear to You with
the faith of Abraham that henceforth I will live to light a
fire-brand in this valley that will burn out this child slavery,
upheld now by ignorance and the greed of the gold lovers. Save
little Shiloh, for You can._"

Bud watched through the crisis, the shorter and shorter breaths, the
struggle--the silence when, only by holding the lighted candle to her
mouth, could the old man tell whether she lived or