nd crackers, like a Polly," persisted
Sam.

"Ye ken do anythin' with critters, if you ain't afeerd of 'em and love
'em," said Peggy shyly.

The tall tunnelman, looking down into the depths of Peggy's sunbonnet,
saw something in the round blue eyes and grave little mouth that made
him think so too. But here Peggy's serious little face took a shade of
darker concern as her arm went down deeper into her pocket, and her eyes
got rounder.

"It's--it's--BURRERED OUT!" she said breathlessly.

The giant leaped briskly to one side. "Hol' on," said Peggy
abstractedly. With infinite gravity she followed, with her fingers, a
seam of her skirt down to the hem, popped them quickly under it, and
produced, with a sigh of relief, the missing gopher.

"You'll do," said Sam, in fearful admiration. "Mebbe you'll make suthin'
out o' the Colonel too. But I never took stock in that there owl. He
was too durned self-righteous for a decent bird. Now, run along afore
anythin' else fetches loose ag'in. So long!"

He patted the top of her sunbonnet, gave a little pull to the short
brown braid that hung behind her temptingly,--which no miner was ever
known to resist,--and watched her flutter off with her spoils. He had
done so many times before, for the great, foolish heart of the Blue
Cement Ridge had gone out to Peggy Baker, the little daughter of the
blacksmith, quite early. There were others of the family, notably
two elder sisters, invincible at picnics and dances, but Peggy was as
necessary to these men as the blue jay that swung before them in the
dim woods, the squirrel that whisked across their morning path, or the
woodpecker who beat his tattoo at their midday meal from the hollow
pine above them. She was part of the nature that kept them young. Her
truancies and vagrancies concerned them not: she was a law to herself,
like the birds and squirrels. There were bearded lips to hail her
wherever she went, and a blue or red-shirted arm always stretched out in
any perilous pass or dangerous crossing.

Her peculiar tastes were an outcome of her nature, assisted by her
surroundings. Left a good deal to herself in her infancy, she made
playfellows of animated nature around her, without much reference to
selection or fitness, but always with a fearlessness that was the result
of her own observation, and unhampered by tradition or other children's
timidity. She had no superstition regarding the venom of toads, the
poison of spiders, or the