f them gals have married long ago," he said, looking at me with a
fine soft gaze; "and bad handfuls their mates have got of them. But
what made you talk of them, missy--or 'my lady,' as now you are in old
country, I hear--what made you think of them like that, my dearie?"

"I can't tell what made me think of them. How can I tell why I think of
every thing?"

"Still, it was an odd thing for your ladyship to say."

"Uncle Sam, I am nobody's ladyship, least of all yours. What makes you
speak so? I am your own little wandering child, whose life you saved,
and whose father you loved, and who loses all who love her. Even from
you I am forced to go away. Oh, why is it always my fate--my fate?"

"Hush!" said the old man; and I stopped my outburst at his whisper. "To
talk of fate, my dearie, shows either one thing or the other--that we
have no will of our own, or else that we know not how to guide it. I
never knew a good man talk of fate. The heathens and the pagans made it.
The Lord in heaven is enough for me; and He always hath allowed me my
own free-will, though I may not have handled 'un cleverly. And He giveth
you your own will now, my missy--to go from us or to stop with us. And
being as you are a very grand young woman now, owning English land and
income paid in gold instead of greenbacks--the same as our nugget seems
likely--to my ideas it would be wrong if we was so much as to ask you."

"Is that what you are full of, then, and what makes you so mysterious? I
did think that you knew me better, and I had a right to hope so."

"Concerning of yourself alone is not what we must think of. You might
do this, or you might do that, according to what you was told, or, even
more, according to what was denied you. For poor honest people, like
Firm and me, to deal with such a case is out of knowledge. For us it
is--go by the will of the Lord, and dead agin your own desires."

"But, dear Uncle Sam," I cried, feeling that now I had him upon his
own tenterhooks, "you rebuked me as sharply as lies in your nature for
daring to talk about fate just now; but to what else comes your own
conduct, if you are bound to go against your own desire? If you have
such a lot of freewill, why must you do what you do not like to do?"

"Well, well, perhaps I was talking rather large. The will of the world
is upon us as well. And we must have respect for its settlements."

"Now let me," I said, with a trembling wish to have every thing right
and