pass. Now it seemed to be fresh made, for painted
vermilion wands stood about the mounds. On one of them was a gold
trinket, tied by a loop of hide, rattled in the wind. It was her ring.
The seeker lay buried there with the talisman above him.

She was awake now, oblivious of the swift sinking of her vital energy.
She must have the ring, for it was the pledge of a great glory....

A breathless little girl flung herself into the cabin. It was Sophy
Hanks, one of the many nieces who squattered like ducks about the
settlement.

"Mammy!" she cried shrilly. "Mammy Linkorn!" She stammered with the
excitement of the bearer of ill news. "Abe's lost your ring in the
crick. He took it for a sinker to his lines, for Indian Jake telled him
a piece of gold would cotch the grit fish. And a grit fish has cotched
it. Abe's bin divn' and divn' and can't find it nohow. He reckons it's
plumb Ain't he a bad 'un, Mammy Linkhorn?"

It was some time before the dying woman understood. Then she began
feebly to cry. For the moment her ring loomed large in her eyes: it was
the earnest of the promise, and without it the promise might fail. She
had not strength to speak or even to sob, and the tears trickled over
her cheeks in dumb impotent misery.

She was roused by the culprit Abe. He stood beside her with his wet hair
streaked into a fringe along his brow. The skin of his neck glistened
wet in the opening of his shirt. His cheeks too glistened, but not with
the water of the creek. He was crying bitterly.

He had no words of explanation or defence. His thick underlip stuck out
and gave him the appeal of a penitent dog; the tears had furrowed paler
channels down grimy cheeks; he was the very incarnation of uncouth
misery.

But his mother saw none of these things.... On the instant he seemed
to her transfigured. Something she saw in him of all the generations
of pleading boys that had passed before her, something of the stern
confidence of the man over whose grave the ring had fluttered. But
more--far more. She was assured that the day of the seekers had passed
and that the finder had come.... The young features were transformed
into the lines of a man's strength. The eyes dreamed but also commanded,
the loose mouth had the gold of wisdom and the steel of resolution. The
promise had not failed her... . She had won everything from life, for
she had given the world a master. Words seemed to speak themselves
in her ear... "Bethink you of the