r more tenderly loved by parent than she. His thoughts
turned to the future, but for some years he believed it was better
that she should remain where she was.

Nellie Dawson became the pet of the mining town. There was not a man
in the place, no matter how rough his ways, nor how dark had been his
past, who was not made the better by her presence. She touched a
responsive chord in every heart. She awoke tones that had been silent
for years, and stirred into life resolves that had lain dormant for a
generation. When the weather grew milder with the approach of spring,
she flitted like a bird from cabin to cabin, equally at home and
dearly prized in all. Many a time when night came, the father was
unable to find her, and perhaps saw nothing of her until the next day,
but he never felt any solicitude. He knew that some of the men had
persuaded her to remain with them, and he was too considerate to rob
them of the pleasure of listening to her innocent prattle, while they
racked their ingenuity and threw dignity to the winds in the effort to
entertain her. Each one strove to make her think more of him than the
others, and it ended by her loving them all.

As a rule, Nellie ate her morning meal at home, after spending the
night with her father, and then she was off for the day, returning or
remaining away as her airy fancy prompted. Her sweet influence in the
mining camp was beyond the power of human calculation to fathom. No
gauge could be placed upon it. Like the sweep of an angel's wing, her
coming seemed to have wafted nearly all the coarseness, wrong and evil
from her path.

"There's a serious question that I want to lay afore this company,"
gravely remarked Wade Ruggles one night in the Heavenly Bower. Dawson
was absent with a brother miner at the lower end of the settlement, so
the gathering felt at liberty to discuss him and his child. Wade of
late had fallen into the habit of taking the lead in such discussions,
and Landlord Ortigies was quite willing to turn over the honors of the
chairmanship to the outspoken fellow.

The remainder of the company were smoking, drinking and talking as the
mood took them, and all looked inquiringly at the speaker, seeing
which Wade continued with the same earnestness he had shown at first:

"It is this: that little angel that was tossed down here in the
blizzard is growing fast; she's larning something cute every day; she
notices things that you don't think of; fact is she's th