ed the crushed, broken right leg.
Never again would he roam over the Sierras as he had when a boy. For
the sins of those awful days Dan was giving part of his very life.

Once he opened his eyes and saw Job, and as he caught the meaning of
it all, a queer look came over his face. Finally he muttered:

"Job, go away from me! I don't deserve a thing from you! I can stand
the pain better than seein' you fixin' me!" and a hot tear stole down
the blanched, hardened face.

But still Job stayed, as the delirium came back and the fever fought
with the doctor for the mastery. Only when the danger line seemed
past, and the noon bell was striking, Job passed out of the old
shanty, up the street by the crowds of men going to the noon shift,
heard the roar of the machinery, staggered in at the office door and
fell across the hard floor.

They were harvesting the August hay on the Pine Tree Ranch before Job
left his invalid chair on the rose-covered porch and mounted Bess for
a dash down to the mill with some of his old-time vigor.

CHAPTER XIX.

"DRIFTING."

She stood in the cabin door, where the morning sunlight stole through
the branches and vines and played around her head. Against the
well-worn post of this plain, unpainted old hut she leaned with a
far-away look in her eyes. Nineteen years ago to-day she was born here
where the hills shut in Blackberry Valley and the trees roofed it
over. From the stream yonder she had learned the ripple of childhood's
laughter; up yonder well-worn trail she had climbed these long years,
away to the great outside world--to the Frost Creek school and the
Gold City church. It was over the same trail that, wearing shoes for
almost the first time in her life, and attired in a black calico dress
and a black straw hat which the neighbors had brought her, Jane had
taken her father's rough hand, long years ago, one summer day, and
followed her mother to the grave. Ten years she had done a woman's
work to try and keep a home for Tom Reed.

How much longer would it be? The impulses and longings of a maiden's
heart were stirring within her. Father's rough, good-natured kindness
still cheered her lonely life, but the morning sun would kiss two
graves in God's Acre yonder some day instead of one. The father's step
was feeble and the years were going fast, and she would be alone.
Alone? Ah, no, not alone, for the loving Christ was hers. Ever since
the old Coyote Valley camp-meeting a new fr