quarter section was rapidly changed to a dull-brown color,
which is odious unto the eye of the Pike. Day by day the brown spot grew
larger, and one morning Sam arose to find all his neighbors departed,
having wreaked their vengeance upon him by taking away his dogs. And in
his delight at their disappearance, Sam freely forgave them all.

Regularly the children were carried to and from school, and even to
Sunday-school--regularly every evening Sam visited the grave on the
hillside, and came back to lie by the hour looking at the sleeping
darlings--little by little farmers began to realize that their property
was undisturbed--little by little Sam's wheat grew and waxed golden; and
then there came a day when a man from 'Frisco came and changed it into a
heavier gold--more gold than Sam had ever seen before. And the farmers
began to stop in to see Sam, and their children came to see his, and
kind women were unusually kind to the orphans, and as day by day Sam
took his solitary walk on the hillside, the load on his heart grew
lighter, until he ceased to fear the day when he, too, should lie there.

[Illustration]

FIRST PRAYER AT HANNEY'S

Hanney's Diggings certainly needed a missionary, if any place ever did;
but, as one of the boys once remarked during a great lack of water, "It
had to keep on a-needin'." Zealous men came up by steamer _via_ the
Isthmus, and seemed to consume with their fiery haste to get on board
the vessel for China and Japan, and carry the glad tidings to the
heathen. Self-sacrificing souls gave up home and friends, and hurried
across, overland, to brave the Pacific and bury themselves among the
Australasian savages. But, though they all passed in sight of Hanney's,
none of them paused to give any attention to the souls who had flocked
there. Men came out from 'Frisco and the East to labor with the Chinese
miners, who were the only peaceable and well-behaved people in the
mines; but the white-faced, good-natured, hard-swearing, generous,
heavy-drinking, enthusiastic, murderous Anglo-Saxons they let severely
alone. Perhaps they thought that hearts in which the good seed had once
been sown, but failed to come up into fruit, were barren soil; perhaps
they thought it preferable to be killed and eaten by cannibals than to
be tumbled into a gulch by a revolver-shot, while the shootist strolled
calmly off in company with his approving conscience, never thinking to
ascertain whether his bullet had co