s a frail looking man.

He built a small but very convenient house, containing five rooms, which,
with the few elegancies he had brought with him, for his child's sake, and
which proclaimed that the strangers had been accustomed to the luxuries of
life heretofore, became the pride and wonder of the settlement.

The house was painted inside and out; there were carpets upon the floors,
draperies at the windows, vases and ornaments on the mantels, pictures on
the walls. But though all the furnishings were of the simplest and
cheapest, yet, to the rude and unaccustomed people about them, their home
seemed a veritable palace.

Another mystery and evidence of superiority was the grave and
self-contained Chinaman who came with them, and was installed as cook and
servant in general in the small kitchen, and who waited upon the young
lady of the house with so much respect and deference.

Here the father and daughter lived in the utmost seclusion. Virgie never
was seen outside her home unless accompanied by her father or servant, and
Mr. Abbot, when not in the mine, devoted himself wholly to his child.

They made no friends, and did not mingle at all with those about them,
although they were always kind and courteous to every one, and thus won
the respect of every man, woman and child in the hamlet. Mr. Abbot had the
appearance of being much broken in spirit; his countenance wore a look of
habitual sadness, and his abundant hair, so prematurely whitened, plainly
told that some heavy trouble had overtaken him in the past. Nothing could
be learned of their antecedents, where they had lived, or why they were
there, though Chi Lu, the servant, was often plied with questions by the
curious, and thus they were regarded as a trio of very mysterious
personages.

After a year or so, it began to be whispered about that "the governor," as
Mr. Abbot was called, because of the respect in which he was held, had
"struck it rich," in other words, that his claim was proving an unusually
fruitful one, and he was making money rapidly. How this came to be known
it would be hard to say, for he was very uncommunicative, going and coming
to and from his work quietly and unostentatiously, and living in the
simplest manner.

As time passed, Virginia Abbot grew even more beautiful than she was when
she had first come to her mountain home. The bracing air agreed with her,
her health was perfect, while her simple manner of living and her regular
habi