THE LITTLE GOLD MINERS OF THE SIERRAS.

Their mother had died crossing the plains, and their father had had a
leg broken by a wagon wheel passing over it as they descended the
Sierras, and he was for a long time after reaching the mines miserable,
lame and poor.

The eldest boy, Jim Keene, as I remember him, was a bright little
fellow, but wild as an Indian and full of mischief. The next eldest
child, Madge, was a girl of ten, her father's favorite, and she was wild
enough too. The youngest was Stumps. Poor, timid, starved Little Stumps!
I never knew his real name. But he was the baby, and hardly yet out of
petticoats. And he was very short in the legs, very short in the body,
very short in the arms and neck; and so he was called Stumps because he
looked it. In fact he seemed to have stopped growing entirely. Oh, you
don't know how hard the old Plains were on everybody, when we crossed
them in ox-wagons, and it took more than half a year to make the
journey. The little children, those that did not die, turned brown like
the Indians, in that long, dreadful journey of seven months, and stopped
growing for a time.

For the first month or two after reaching the Sierras, old Mr. Keene
limped about among the mines trying to learn the mystery of finding
gold, and the art of digging. But at last, having grown strong enough,
he went to work for wages, to get bread for his half-wild little ones,
for they were destitute indeed.

Things seemed to move on well, then. Madge cooked the simple meals, and
Little Stumps clung to her dress with his little pinched brown hand
wherever she went, while Jim whooped it over the hills and chased
jack-rabbits as if he were a greyhound. He would climb trees, too, like
a squirrel. And, oh!--it was deplorable--but how he could swear!

At length some of the miners, seeing the boy must come to some bad end
if not taken care of, put their heads and their pockets together and
sent the children to school. This school was a mile away over the
beautiful brown hills, a long, pleasant walk under the green California
oaks.

Well, Jim would take the little tin dinner bucket, and his slate, and
all their books under his arm and go booming ahead about half a mile in
advance, while Madge with brown Little Stumps clinging to her side like
a burr, would come stepping along the trail under the oak-trees as fast
as she could after him.

But if a jack-rabbit, or a deer, or a fox crossed Jim's path, no