olding the ring before the sunbonnet.

When he reached the woods, he attacked the outcrop he had noticed, and
detached with his hands and the aid of a sharp rock enough of the loose
soil to fill the pan. This he took to the spring, and, lowering the
pan in the pool, began to wash out its contents with the centrifugal
movement of the experienced prospector. The saturated red soil
overflowed the brim with that liquid ooze known as "slumgullion," and
turned the crystal pool to the color of blood until the soil was washed
away. Then the smaller stones were carefully removed and examined, and
then another washing of the now nearly empty pan showed the fine black
sand covering the bottom. This was in turn as gently washed away.

Alas! the clean pan showed only one or two minute glistening yellow
scales, like pinheads, adhering from their specific gravity to the
bottom; gold, indeed, but merely enough to indicate "the color," and
common to ordinary prospecting in his own locality.

He tried another panful with the same result. He became aware that the
pan was leaky, and that infinite care alone prevented the bottom from
falling out during the washing. Still it was an experiment, and the
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