Joaquin Miller

MOUNT SHASTA.

And what a mighty heart these Sierras have! Kissing the purple of heaven now, and now in their awful deeps hiding the shrinking form of darkness from the sun.

The shaggy monsters that prowl there, the mountains of gold that lie waiting there, the mystery and the splendor! Oh keep with me, my friend, for a little while in the Sierras; breathe their balm and health, see their sublimity, feel their might and their majesty; step upward, as on stepping stairs to heaven; and my word for it, you will be none the worse.

In a canyon here, deep, deep, away down in the darkness, where night seems to have an abiding place, where the sun sifts through the pine-tops timidly, where the loftiest trees tip-toe up and seem to strive to reach out of the edge of the chasm, there gurgles a little muddy stream among the boulders, about the miners' legs, as they bend their backs wearily and toil for gold.

Here the smoke curls up from a low log cabin; there a squirrel barks a nut on the roof of a ruined and deserted miner's home, and away up yonder, where the deep gorge is so narrow you can almost leap across it, the wild beasts prowl as if it were really night, and great owls beat their wings against the boughs of the dense wood in everlasting darkness. But high over gorge and wilderness, gleaming against the cold blue sky, towers Mount Shasta, the monarch of the Sierras.

Here, where the canyon debouches into the little valley, once stood a populous mining camp; and a little further on, where the sun fell in full splendor, a few farms of a primitive kind, tended by broken-down old miners, lay.

The old glory of the camp was gone, and only a few battered and crippled men were left. It was as if there had been a great battle of the giants, and the victorious and successful had gone away with all the fruits of victory, and left the wounded, the helpless, the half-hearted behind. The mining camp at the mouth of the great canyon had been worked out, so far as the placer mines went, and these few broken men who remained, as a rule, were turning their attention to other things. Here one had planted a little garden on the hillside, on a spot that had once been a graveyard. There, an old lawyer had grown grape-vines all over and about the door and chimney of his cabin, till men said it looked like a spider-web.

But old Forty-nine only bored deeper and deeper into the spur of the mountain, and paid but little attention to any of the changes that went on around him. He had been working in that tunnel alone for nearly twenty-five years. He was a man with a history—men said a murderer. He shunned men, and men shunned him. Was he rich? He professed to be very poor; men said he must be worth a million. Would a man work on twenty-five years in one tunnel, and all alone, for nothing? But if rich, why did he remain?

Still further down, and quite on the edge of the valley, stood another cabin. And this was quite overgrown with vines, and was quite hidden away in a growth of pines that gathered over it. Then there was an undergrowth of fruit trees that grew inside the fence and about the lonely porch. On this porch had sat, for years and years, a tawny, silent old woman. She was sickly—had neither wealth, wit nor beauty—and so, so far as the world went, was left quite alone.

But there was another and an all-sufficient reason why neither man or woman came that way. She was an Indian. Do not imagine this a wild Indian woman. Indian she was; but remember, the Catholics had more than half civilized nearly all the native Californians long before we undertook to kill them.

This Indian woman would have been called by strangers a Mexican woman. She was very religious, and had imbued her boy with all her beautiful faith and simple piety.

I know that the spectacle of an old Indian woman and her "half-breed" son, represented as the morality and religion of a camp made up of "civilized" Saxons, will seem somewhat novel to you. But I knew this Indian boy and his mother well, and know every foot of the ground I intend to go over, and every fact I propose to narrate. And if you are not prepared to receive this as truth, I prefer you to close this page right here.

To make a moment's digression, with your permission, let me state briefly and frankly, once for all, that the only really religious, unquestioning and absolutely devout Christians I ever met in America are the Indians. I know of no other people so faithful and so blindly true to their belief, outside of the peasantry of Italy. Be their beautiful faith born of ignorance or what, I do not say. I simply assert that it exists. There is no devotion so true as that of a converted Indian. Maybe it is the devotion of idolatry, the faith of superstition. But I repeat, it is sincere. And let me further say, it seems to me whatever is worth believing at all, is worth believing utterly and entirely—just as these simple children of the wilderness believe, without doubt or question.

I know nothing so beautiful—may I say picturesque?—as the Ummatilla Indians of Oregon at worship on Sunday. Not a man, woman or child of all the tribe absent. Not one voice silent when the hymns are given out, in all that vast, gaily colored and singular assemblage.

This is the tribe of which the white settlers asked and received protection last year when the Shoshonees ravaged the country, beat off the soldiers, and slew some of the settlers. And yet there is a bill before Congress to-day to take away the few remaining acres from this tribe and open up the place to white settlers. Indeed, it seems that every member of Congress from Oregon has just this one mission; for the first, and almost the only thing he does while there, is to introduce and urge the passage of this bill, whereby the red man is to be turned out of his well-tilled fields, and the white man turned into them.

In truth, these very fields have long been staked off and claimed by bold, bad white men, who hover about the borders of this Reservation, waiting for the long-promised law which is to take this land from the owners and give it to them. They nominate their members of Congress on his pledge and bond, and constant promise, to take this land from the Indian. They vote for and elect the only member of Congress from this State on that promise, certain that their absolute ownership of this graveyard of the Indian is only a question of time. Year by year the graveyard grows broader; the fields grow narrower; they grow less in number; for now and then an Indian is found wandering away from the Reservation to his former hunting-grounds and ancient graves of his fathers. He seldom comes back. Sometimes his murderers trouble themselves to throw the body in the brush or some gorge or canyon. But most frequently it is left where it falls. To say that all the people or the best people of this brave young State approve of this, would be unfair—untrue. Yet this does not save the Indian, who is doing his best to fit into the new order of things around him. He is shot down, and neither grand or petit jury can be found to punish his murderer.

But to the story. This little piece of land where the old Indian woman had lived and brought up her boy, was rich and valuable. It was therefore coveted by the white man. At first men had said: "She will die soon; the boy will then sell the hut for a song, gamble off the money, and then go the way of all who are stained with the dark and tawny blood of the savage—death in a ditch from some unknown rifle, or death by the fever in the new Reservation." But the old woman still lived on; and the boy, by his industry, sobriety, duty and devotion to his mother, put to shame the very best among the new generation of white men in the mountains. The singular manhood of John Logan was the subject of remark by all who knew him. With the few true men on this savage edge of the world it made him fast friends; with the many outlaws and evil natures it made him the subject of envy and bitter hatred.

What power behind this boy had lifted him up and led him on? Surely no Indian woman, wholly unlettered in the ways of the white man, good and true as she may have been, had brought him up to this high place on which he now stood. Who was his father? and what strong hand had reached out all these years and kept his mother there in that little hut with her boy, while her tribe perished or passed away to the hated and horrible Reservation down toward the sea?

Who was his father? The Camp had asked this a thousand times. The boy himself had looked into the deep, pathetic eyes of his mother, and asked the question in his heart for many and many a year; but he never opened his lips to ask her. It was too sad, too sacred a subject, and he would not ask of her what she would not freely give. And now she lay dying there alone on the porch, as her boy stopped to talk with the two children, "the babes in the wood," and her secret hidden in her own heart.

And who were the "babes in the wood?" Little waifs, fugitives, hiding from the man-hunters. As a rule in early days, when the settlers killed off the adult Indians in their forays, they took the children and brought them up in slavery. But the girl—the eldest, stronger and lither of these two dark little creatures—darting, hiding, stealing about this ruined old camp, was so wild and spirited, even from the first, that no one wanted her. And then she was dangerously bright, and above all, she did not quite look the Indian; men doubted if she really were an Indian or no, sometimes. But I remember hearing old Leather-Nose, as he sat on a barrel one night in the grocery, and squirted amber at the back-log, say: "I guess, by gol, she's Injun: She's devilish enough. She don't look the Injun, I know; but its the cussedness that makes me know she's Injun."

"And when did she come to the camp?" asked a respectable stranger.

"Don't know. That's it. Nobody don't know, and nobody don't care, I guess."

"Well, don't you know where she came from? Children don't come down, you know, like rain or snow. There were about fifty little children left in the Mountain-meadow massacre. They are somewhere. These may be some of them. Don't you know who brought them here, or how they came?" asked the honest stranger, leaning forward and looking into the faces of the wrinkled and hairy old miners.

An old miner turned his quid again and again, and at last feeling scant interest in the ragged little sister who led her little brother about by the hand, and stood between him and peril as she kept their liberty—drily answered, along with his fellows, as follows: "Some said an old Indian that died had her; but I don't know. Forty-nine knows most about her. When he's short of grub, and that's pretty often now, I guess, why she has to do the best she can."

"O, it was a sick looking thing at first. Why, it wasn't that high, and was all hair and bones," growled out an old gray miner, in reply to the man.

"Yes; and don't you know when we called it the 'baby,' and it used to beg around about the cabins? The poor little barefooted brat."

"Yes, and when the 'baby' nearly starved, and eat some raw turnips that made it sick."

"Yes, and got the colic—"

"Yes, and Gambler Jake got on his mule and started for the doctor."

"Yes, an' got in a poker game at Mariposa, and didn't get back for four days."

"Yes, and the doctor didn't come; and so the baby got well."

"Yes, just so, just so." And old Col. Billy bobbed his head, and fell to thinking of other days.

This little piece of land where the old Indian woman had lived so long, and about which she had built a fence, was very valuable indeed. Valley land was scarce here in the mountains; and there was a young orchard, the only thing of the kind in the country. And then the roads forked there, and two little rivers ran together there, and that meant that a town would spring up there as the country became settled, farms opened, and the Indians were swept away. Evil-minded men are never without resources. The laws are made to restrain such men; but on the border there is no law enforced. So you see how powerful are the wicked there; how powerless the weak, though never so well disposed.

In the far West, if an Indian is in your way, you have only to report him to the Agent of the Indian Reservation. That is all you have to do. He disappears, or dies. This Indian Agent is only too anxious to fill up his wasting ranks of Indians. They are dying every day. And if they all should die, sooner or later the fact may be known at Washington, and in the course of a few years the Reservation and office would be abolished together. And then each additional Indian contributes greatly to the Agent's income, for each Indian must be fed and clothed—or at least, the Agent is permitted to draw clothing, blankets and food for every Indian brought upon the Reservation. As to the Indians receiving these things, that is quite another affair.

Well, here were men wanting this land. Down yonder, far away to the scorching South, at the edge of the level alkali lands, in a tule swamp, where the Indians taken from the mountains were penned up and dying like sheep in a corral, was a bold, enterprising Indian Agent who was gathering in, under orders of his Government, all the Indians of Northern California. He could appoint a hundred deputies, and authorize them to bring in the Indians wherever found.

The two children—"the babes in the wood"—had been taken to the Reservation; but being bold and active, they contrived to soon escape and return to the mountains. Men whispered that the girl owed her escape to the great and growing favor in which she was held by one of the deputy agents, who, with his partner, a rough and coarse-grained man, had their homes in this camp. The cabin of these two deputy agents, Dosson and Emens, stood not far from that of old Forty-Nine. But so far as I can remember, the old man and the newly appointed deputy agents had always been at enmity.

This Dosson was certainly a bad man. He was in every sense of the word a desperado, and so was his partner; just the men most wanted by the head agent at the Reservation to capture and bring in Indians.

But whether this girl owed her escape or not to this ruffian, Dosson, certain it is that on her return she avoided his cabin, and when not in the woods, hovered about that of old Forty-Nine. This enraged Dosson beyond degree. To add to his anger, she now began to show a particular preference for John Logan. The idea of having an Indian for a rival was more than this ignorant and brutal Deputy Agent could well bear, and he set to work at once to rid himself of the object of his hatred.

The hard and merciless man-hunter almost shouted with delight at a new idea which now came upon him with the light and suddeness of a revelation. He ran at once to his partner, and told him of his determination.

Then these two men sat down and talked a long time together. They made marks in the sand with sticks. They set up little stakes in the sand, and seemed delighted as they reached their heads out and looked down from the mouth of their tunnel toward the Indian farm.

That night these two men stole down together, and set up stakes and made corner marks about John Logan's land while he slept, and then rolled themselves in their blankets, and spent the night inside the limits of their new location. Having done this, and sent a notice of their pre-emption to the Surveyor General, to be filed as their declaration of claim to the little farm with the orchard, they entered complaint against John Logan, and so sat down to await results.

Meantime, this old woman sat alone, with a great dog by her side, sick and desolate, waiting her sun of life to set, piously waiting, dark browed, thoughtful; while her tall handsome boy, meek, obedient, with the awful curse of Cain upon his brow, the mark of Indian blood, was toiling on up in the canyon alone.

You had better be a negro—you had better be ten times a negro, were it possible—than be one-tenth part an Indian in the West. The Indian will have little to do with one who is part Indian. And as for the white man, unless the Indian is willing to be his slave, do him homage and service, he would sooner take a leper in his house or to his heart.

Up and above the Indian woman's house, in the dense wood and on the spur of the mountain, wound an old Indian trail. Along this trail, above the hidden house, stole two little creatures—tawny, sunburnt, ragged, wretched, yet full of affection for each other. These were the two wretched children escaped from the Reservation. They were now being harbored by old Forty-nine. For this he was liable to be arrested and punished. Knowing this, he kept his gun loaded and standing in the corner of his cabin, where the children slept at night.

How strange that this one man, the most despised and miserable, should be the only one to reach a hand to help these little waifs of the woods! And who knew or who cared from where they came? They did not look the Indian, though they acted it to perfection. They would run away and hide from the face of man. Yet the girl, under the passionate California sun, was almost blossoming into womanhood. They were called brother and sister. God knows if they were or no. Break up tribes, families, as these had been broken up—fire into a flock of young quails all day—and who knows how soon or where the few that escape may gather together again, or if they will know each other when they meet, years after in the woods?

Children are so impressionable. They had heard some one in the camp call the old Indian woman who sat forever on the porch in the dense foliage, with the big dog beside her, a witch. They did not know what that meant. But they knew it was something dreadful, and they shunned and abhorred her accordingly. Yet the girl knew John Logan, her tall handsome son, well, and liked him, too.

As they stole along the dim old Indian trail, their necks were stretched toward the old Indian woman's hut below. They were as noiseless as two panthers. At last the girl stopped, stood still, pointed and half pushed the boy before and in through the thicket, past an occasional lonely cabin, toward the widow's woody home.

This old woman had long been ailing. She was now very ill. You are surprised to learn of sickness in the heart of the Sierras? I tell you that if you were to wash down mountains and uproot forests in the moon—were such a thing possible—the ague would seize hold of you and shake you for it. Nature is revengeful. But to return to the wilderness.

What a wilderness this was! Only here and there, at long intervals, a little cabin down in the deep, dense wood; these cabins scattered as if the hand of some mighty sower had reached out over the wilderness, and had sown and strown them there, to take root and grow to some great harvest of civilization. The narrow Indian trail wound along, almost entirely hidden by overhanging woods—a trail that turned and twisted at every little obstacle; here it was the prostrate form of some patriarch tree, or here it curved and cork-screwed in and out through mighty forest-kings, that stood like comrades in ranks of battle.

Where did this little Indian trail lead to? Where did it begin? How many a love-tale had been told in the shadow of those mighty trees that reached their long, strong arms out over the heads of all passers-by, in a sort of priestly benediction?

Where did the Indian trail lead to? To the West. But leaves were strewn thick along it now. The Indian had gone, to come back no more. Ever to the West points the Indian's path. Ever down to the great gold shore of the vast west sea leads the Indian's path. And there the waves sweep in and obliterate his foot-prints forever.

The two half-wild children who had disappeared down the dim trail a few moments before, now suddenly re-appear. They are eager and excited. This boy cannot be above ten years old; yet he looks old as a man. The girl may be twelve, fifteen, or even sixteen. Age at such a period is a matter of either blood or climate. She has a shock of unkempt hair; she wears a tattered dress of as many colors as Jacob's coat. She has one toeless boot on one foot; on the other she wears a shoe so big that it might hold both her feet. Down over this shoe rolls a large red woolen stocking, leaving her shapely little ankle bleeding from brier-scratches. In her hand she swings a large, coarse straw hat by its broad red ribbons. Her every limb is full of force and fire; her voice is firm and resolute, but not rapid. Hers is a splendid energy, needing but proper direction.

Her brother, who puffs and pants at her side, is named Johnny; but the wild West, which has a habit of naming things because they look it, has dubbed him "Stumps," since he is short and fat. He is half-clad in a pair of tattered pants, a great straw hat, and a full, stuffy, check shirt, which is held in subjection by a pair of hand-made woolen suspenders—the work of his sister.

Both are out of breath—both are looking back wildly; but Stumps huddles up again and again close under his sister's arm, as if he fears he might be followed, and looks to her for protection. She draws him close to her, and then looking back, and then down into his upturned face, says breathlessly:

"Stumps! Oh, Stumps, did you get 'em, Stumps?"

The boy shrinks closer to his sister, and again looking back, and then seeing for a certainty that he is not followed, he grows bolder and says:

"Git 'em, Carats? Look there! And that 'un is your'n, Carats; and you can have both of 'em if you want 'em, for I don't feel hungry now, Carats," and here he hitches up his pants, and wipes his nose on his sleeve.

"Why, Stumps, don't you feel hungry now?" Then suddenly beholding two upheld ruddy peaches, she catches her breath, and says: "Oh, oh!" and she starts back and throws up her hands. "Oh, the pretty, pretty peaches!"

"Here, take 'em both, Carrie—I ain't hungry now."

"No, I don't want but one, Stumps—one 's enough. Why, how you tore your pants; and your shin 's a bleeding, too. Why, poor Stumps!"

Stumps, looking back, cries:

"Shoo! Thar war a dog—yes, thar war a dog! And what do you think! Shoo! I thought I heard somethin' a comin'. Carats, old Miss Logan, the Injun woman, seed me!"

"Why, Stumps! No?"

"Yes, she did. When I clim' the fence, and slid down that sapling in the yard, there she laid on the porch on her shuck-bed a-shaking with the ager. And, Carats, she was a-looking right straight at me—yes, she was; so help me, she was."

"Why, Stumps; and what did she do! Didn't she holler, and say 'Seek 'em, Bose?'"

"Carats, she didn't; and that's what's the matter—and that's why I don't want to eat any peaches, Carats. Carats, I wish she had—I do, I do, so help me. Let's not eat 'em—let's take 'em back—Carrie, sister Carrie, let's take 'em back."

Carrie thoughtfully and tenderly gazes in his face.

"Let's take 'em to old Forty-nine, Johnny. There ain't nothing he can eat, you know; an' then he's been a-shakin' since melon-time,—an' Johnny, I don't think we are very good to him, anyhow."

Stumps, scratching his bleeding shin with his foot, exclaims:

"I've barked my shin, and I've tore'd my pants, an' I don't care! But I won't take him a peach that I've stoled. Why, what would he think, Carats? He'd die dead, he would, if he thought I'd stoled them peaches from the poor old sick Injun woman; yes he would, Carats."

"Johnny, I'll tell him we found 'em," as Stumps looks doubtingly at her, "tell him we found 'em in a tree, Stumps. Yes tell him we found 'em away up in the top of a cedar tree."

"But I don't want to tell no lie, nor do nothin' bad no more, and I want to go home, I do."

"Well, Stumps—Johnny, brother Johnny, what will we do with them? We can't stand here all day. I want to go home, too. Oh, this hateful, hateful peach! I want to go right off!" and the girl, hiding her face in her hands, begins to weep.

"Oh, sister Carrie—sister, don't, don't; sister, don't, don't!"

"Then let's eat 'em."

"I don't like peaches."

"I don't like peaches either!" cries Carrie, throwing back her hair, wiping her eyes, and trying to be bright and cheerful. "I never could eat peaches. I like pine-nuts, and cowcumbers, and tomatuses, and—pine-nuts. Oh, I'm very fond of pine-nuts. I like pine-nuts roasted, and tomatuses, an' I like chestnuts raw, an' tomatuses. Don't you like pine-nuts and tomatuses, Johnny, and cowcumbers."

"I don't like nothin' any more."

"Then, Johnny, take 'em back."

"I—I—I take 'em back by myself? I take 'em back, an' hear old Bose growl, and look into her holler eyes?" Here the boy shudders, and looking around timidly, he creeps closer to his sister and says, as he again gazes back in the direction of the Indian woman's cabin: "I'd be afraid she might be dead, Carats, an' there'd be nobody to hold the dog. Oh, I see her holler eyes looking at me all the time. If she'd only let the dog come. Confound her! If she'd only let the dog come!"

"Oh, Johnny, Johnny—brother Johnny, come, lets go home! Shoo! There's somebody coming. It's John Logan, coming home from his work."

As the girl speaks, John Logan, the sick woman's son, a strong handsome man, only brown as if browned by the sun, with a pick on his shoulder and a gold-pan slanting under his arm, comes whistling along the trail. Seeing the children, he stops and says:

"Why, children, good evening! What are you running away for? Come, come now, don't be so shy, my little neighbors, and don't give the trail all to me because I happen to be a man, and the strongest. Come, Johnny, give me your hand. There! an honest, chubby little fist it is. Why, what have you got in your other hand? Been gathering nuts, hey? You little squirrel! Give me a nut, won't you."

Carrie approaches, dives her hand into her ragged pocket and reaches the man a heaped handful of nuts.

"There, if you'll have nuts I'll bring you nuts; I'll bring you lots of nuts, I will; I'll bring you a bushel of nuts, an'—some tomatuses."

"Oh, you are too kind. But now I must hasten home to mother. Come, shake hands again, and say good-bye." The girl gives her left hand. "No your right hand."

Carrie is bothered, and slips the peach in her left hand behind, and, with a lifted face, full of glow and enthusiasm, says:

"I'll bring you a whole bag full of nuts, I will," and she reaches him her hand eagerly.

"Oh Carrie, I have a nice little surprise for you, and if you won't tell I'll let you into the secret. You won't tell?"

He comes close to her, sits down his gold-pan, and resting his pick on the ground, with his two hands on the top of the handle, leans toward her and looks into her innocent uplifted face.

The girl's eyes brighten, and she seems to grow tall and beautiful under his earnest gaze.

"I won't tell, sir. Oh, please to trust me, sir—I won't tell, Mr. John Logan!"

The boy eagerly comes forward also.

"I won't tell, neither. I won't tell neither; so help me!"

"Well, then, come close to me, Johnny, come close up here, and look in my face—there! Why, I declare the pleasure I now have, telling you this, is more than gold! And I need money sadly enough."

"You're awful poor, ain't you?" asked Stumps, hitching up his pants.

"Been workin' all day and ain't got much in the pan," says Carrie, looking sidewise at the few colors of gold in the bottom edge of the pan.

"Ah, yes, Carrie. Look at my hands—hard and rough as the bark of a tree; but I don't mind that, Carrie, I was born here, I was born poor, I shall live poor and die poor. But I don't mind it, Carrie. I have my mother to love and look after, and while she lives I am content."

The girl looks at the woods, looks at the man, and then once more at the woods, and at last in her helplessness to solve the problem, falls to eating nuts, as usual; while the man continues, as if talking to himself:

"This is the peace of Paradise; and see the burning bush! Now I can well understand that Moses saw the face of God in the bush of fire."

"Oh," the girl says to herself, "if he only would be cross! If he only would say something rough to us! If he only would cuss."

She resolves to say or do something to break the spell. She asks eagerly:

"Are you going to give something to Stumps and me?—I mean Johnny and me?"

"Yes, yes, to-morrow evening, after my work is done. And now I am going to tell you and Johnny what it is. It ain't much; it's the least little thing in the world; but I don't deserve any credit for even that—it's my poor dear old mother's idea. She has laid there, day after day, on the porch, and she has been thinking, not all the time of her own sickness and sorrow, but of others, as well; and she has thought much of you."

The boy stands far aside, and at mention of this he jerks himself into a knot, his head drops down between his shoulders, his mouth puckers up, and he exclaims "Oh, hoka!"

"Thought of me?" says Carrie.

"Of you, Carrie. And listen; I must tell you a little story. When I was a very young man, and killed my first grizzly bear, I bought a little peach-tree and planted it in the corner of the yard, as people sometimes plant trees to remember things. Well, my mother, she had the ague that day powerful, for it was after melon-time, and she sat on the porch and shook, and shook, and shook, and watched me plant it, and when I got done, my mother she cried. I don't know why she cried, Carrie, but she did. She cried and she cried, and when I went up to her, and put my arms around her neck and kissed her, she only cried the more, for she was sort of hysteric-like, you know, and she said she knew she'd never live to eat any fruit off of that tree."

Carrie stops eating nuts a moment.

"But she will—she will get well, Mr. John Logan—she will get well, won't she?"

"Ah, indeed, I believe she will get well, but whether she ever gets right well or not, she certainly will live to eat peaches from that tree. Carrie, we've talked it all over, and what do you think? Why, now listen, I will tell you. This tree that I planted, and that my poor sick mother was afraid she would not live to eat the fruit from—this tree was a peach tree."

Carrie again takes out a handful of nuts from her pocket, as if she would like to eat them. She looks at them a second, throws them away, and hastens to one side.

"I want to go home," cries Stumps. "I don't like peaches, Mr. John Logan. I don't—I don't—so help me," and the boy jerks at his pants wildly.

John Logan turns to him kindly. "Why, you never had a peach in your little hand in your life." Then turning to Carrie: "Yes, Carrie, there has grown this year, high up in the sun on that tree, side by side, two—and only two—red, ripe peaches. Why, children, don't run away! Wait one moment, and I will go a little way with you. As I was about to say, these two peaches are at last ripe. I own I was the least bit afraid, even after I saw them there on that bough one Summer morning, that even then my mother might die before they became fully ripe. But now they are ripe, and this evening I shall pull them. And to-morrow, after my day's work is done, my sick mother shall eat one, and you two shall eat the other."

Carrie puts up her hand and backs away.

"Don't—don't—don't call me Carrie; call me Carats—Carats—Carats—like the others do!"

"Why, Carrie! What in the world is the matter with you?"

"If a body steals, Mr. John Logan—if a body steals—what had a body better do?"

"Why, the Preacher says a body should confess—confess it, feel sorry, and be forgiven."

"I can't—I can't confess, and I can't be forgiven!"

John Logan starts!

"You—you, Carrie; is it you? Then you have already confessed, and He will forgive you!"

"But such stealing as this nobody—nothing—can forgive," falling on her knees. "I—I made my little brother steal your peaches!"

"You!—you made him steal my two peaches that I wanted for my sick mother? You—you, Carrie?"

Stumps rushed forward.

"No—No! I done it myself! I done it all myself—I did, so help me!"

"But I made him do it!" cries Carrie. "I am the biggest, and I knew better—I knew better. But we couldn't eat 'em. Here they are—oh I am so glad we couldn't eat 'em!" And they fall on their knees at his feet together; four little hands reach out the peaches to him eagerly, earnestly, as if in prayer to Heaven.

The man takes their little hands, and, choking with tears, says, in a voice full of pathos and pity, and uncovering his head, with lifted face, as he remembers something of the story the good Priest so often read to his mother: "and there was more joy in Heaven over the one that was found, than over the ninety-and-nine that went not astray."