baby was born he seemed to pull himself together, for he was
quite mad about her, and from the day the baby came--talk about
miracles!--from that day he never drank a drop. She gave the baby over
to him, and the baby simply absorbed him.

'He was a new man. He could not drink whisky and kiss his baby. And
the miners--it was really absurd if it were not so pathetic. It was the
first baby in Black Rock, and they used to crowd Mavor's shop and peep
into the room at the back of it--I forgot to tell you that when he
lost his position as manager he opened a hardware shop, for his people
chucked him, and he was too proud to write home for money--just for a
chance to be asked in to see the baby. I came upon Nixon standing at the
back of the shop after he had seen the baby for the first time, sobbing
hard, and to my question he replied: "It's just like my own." You can't
understand this. But to men who have lived so long in the mountains that
they have forgotten what a baby looks like, who have had experience of
humanity only in its roughest, foulest form, this little mite, sweet
and clean, was like an angel fresh from heaven, the one link in all that
black camp that bound them to what was purest and best in their past.

'And to see the mother and her baby handle the miners!

'Oh, it was all beautiful beyond words! I shall never forget the shock
I got one night when I found "Old Ricketts" nursing the baby. A drunken
old beast he was; but there he was sitting, sober enough, making
extraordinary faces at the baby, who was grabbing at his nose and
whiskers and cooing in blissful delight. Poor "Old Ricketts" looked as
if he had been caught stealing, and muttering something about having to
go, gazed wildly round for some place in which to lay the baby, when in
came the mother, saying in her own sweet, frank way: "O Mr. Ricketts"
(she didn't find out till afterwards his name was Shaw), "would you mind
keeping her just a little longer?--I shall be back in a few minutes."
And "Old Ricketts" guessed he could wait.

'But in six months mother and baby, between them, transformed "Old
Ricketts" into Mr. Shaw, fire-boss of the mines. And then in the
evenings, when she would be singing her baby to sleep, the little shop
would be full of miners, listening in dead silence to the baby-songs,
and the English songs, and the Scotch songs she poured forth without
stint, for she sang more for them than for her baby. No wonder they
adored her. She w