result a failure.
Fleming was too old a prospector to take his disappointment seriously.
Indeed, it was characteristic of that performance and that period that
failure left neither hopelessness nor loss of faith behind it; the
prospector had simply miscalculated the exact locality, and was equally
as ready to try his luck again. But Fleming thought it high time to
return to his own mining work in camp, and at once set off to return the
pan to its girlish owner and recover his ring.
As he approached the cabin again, he heard the sound of singing. It was
evidently the girl's voice, uplifted in what seemed to be a fragment of
some negro camp-meeting hymn:--
"Dar was a poor man and his name it was Lazarum,
Lord bress de Lamb--glory hallelugerum!
Lord bress de Lamb!"
The first two lines had a brisk movement, accented apparently by the
clapping of hands or the beating of a tin pan, but the refrain, "Lord
bress de Lamb," was drawn out in a lugubrious chant of infinite tenuity.
"The rich man died and he went straight to hellerum.
Lord bress de Lamb--glory hallelugerum!
Lord bress de Lamb!"
Fleming paused at the cabin door. Before he could rap the voice rose
again:--
"When ye see a poo' man be sure to give him crumbsorum,
Lord bress de Lamb--glory hallelugerum!
Lord bress de Lamb!"
At the end of this interminable refrain, drawn out in a youthful nasal
contralto, Fleming knocked. The girl instantly appeared, holding the
ring in her fingers. "I reckoned it was you," she said, with an affected
briskness, to conceal her evident dislike at parting with the trinket.
"There it is!"
But Fleming was too astounded to speak. With the opening of the door
the sunbonnet had fallen back like a buggy top, disclosing for the first
time the head and shoulders of the wearer. She was not a child, but
a smart young woman of seventeen or eighteen, and much of his
embarrassment arose from the consciousness that he had no reason
whatever for having believed her otherwise.
|