wealth, and the miners were repaid a hundred fold, while
the grateful parent thanked them for their thoughtful kindness.

With no other person of her sex in the settlement, it would naturally
be thought that she lacked in many of the little attentions which only
a mother or adult female friend can give, but such was not the case.
There was not a man among them all, who had not been taught in the
hard school of necessity to become his own tailor and conservator of
clothing. Many had natural taste, and had not wholly forgotten the
education and training received in the homes of civilization, before
they became adventurers and wanderers. A consensus of views, all moved
by the same gentle impulse, resulted in Nellie Dawson being clothed in
a garb which would hardly have caused criticism in the metropolis of
our country. Not only that, but she was abundantly provided against
all kinds of weather, and with Vose Adams making his regular trips
westward, there was no possibility of her ever knowing the want of
thoughtful care.

The education of the little one was never neglected. Enough has been
told to show her brightness, and even had not her teacher been
inspired by his affection for the little one, the task of imparting
knowledge to such an apt pupil must have been a constant pleasure.
This work, as we have shown, fell by common consent to the parson,
Felix Brush, though his choice at first was not unanimous. Wade
Ruggles was so insistent that he should have a part in the work, that
he was allowed a trial, but it cannot be said the result of several
days' effort was satisfactory. A stealthy inspection of the blackboard
by Budge Isham and the parson disclosed that Ruggles had constructed
the alphabet on a system of his own. Some of the letters were
reversed, several inverted, while the forms of others prevented any
one from identifying them except the teacher himself.

An examination of the pupil developed the same startling originality
in Ruggles's system of orthography, which seemed to be a mixture of
the phonetic and the prevailing awkward method. Thus he insisted that
"purp" was the right way to spell the name of a young dog, whose
correct title was "dorg." Ruggles was finally persuaded to resign,
though he displayed considerable ill feeling and intimated that the
movement was inspired by jealousy of his success.

Budge Isham not only refrained from referring to the slip which the
parson made in his spelling lesson, b