ne of conduct on which they have set
their hearts.

Deaf to all arguments, therefore, Dora shut up her house and set about
making preparations for her journey. In the adjoining county, as she
had learned, a company of gold-hunters had been organized, and was
then on the point of starting for the Sacramento Valley, in which was
situated the little town from which her father had last written. Of
this company of sixty men she knew but one, and he was a mere boy in
years, the youngest of the party. This was Hiram Bridge, familiarly
termed Posey in honor of his native county, who four years before had
been one of Dora's first pupils in her Clarksville school. She was
little more than a girl herself at that time, and Hiram was her
biggest boy; and her recollection now of the bond of good-fellowship
that soon grew up between herself and the shy, overgrown but not
overbright lad relieved her of any hesitation she might otherwise have
felt in applying to him to obtain permission for her to accompany his
party to its destination.

"Yes, you can go, Miss Hanchett," Posey quietly replied to her appeal.

"But will the rest of the men be willing?" she suggested.

"Doesn't signify," said Posey.

She did prevail on him, however, as a matter of form, to mention the
subject to his comrades; but as he never took the trouble to report to
her what action, if any, they took in the matter, she started at last,
relying altogether on his single friendship for protection. That was
no mean reliance, though, as she soon began to realize. He was an
immense fellow, six feet two in height, and broad in proportion; and
he soon proved to Dora that, however readily he had undertaken
her safe conduct, he did not lightly esteem that charge, but was
determined to aid and befriend her in every way possible. Thus at the
outset she found herself relieved of much of the embarrassment and
annoyance she had believed to be inseparable from such a journey in
such companionship. Posey himself she did not find to be companionable
in the ordinary sense of that word, notwithstanding his constant
kindness. He was of a quiet turn, reserved; of speech, rather
forbidding of countenance, and did not wear his excellent heart upon
his sleeve. There were few surface indications of the gold that was in
him. Dora was not long, however, in finding the auriferous vein; and,
to drop metaphor, she soon became conscious of a very warm sentiment
of gratitude growing up in her h