of crimson, while
a lounge and two or three chairs completed the furnishing of the room.

Beside the table, in a low rocker, several paces from the invalid by the
fire, yet where she could catch every expression of his pale, sad face,
there sat a young girl, with a piece of fancy work in her hands, upon
which she had been busily engaged before her father spoke.

She was perhaps twenty years of age, with a straight, perfect form, and a
face that would have better graced a a palace than the humble mountain
home where she now abode. It was a pure, oval, with delicate, beautiful
brows; soft, round cheeks, in which a lovely pink came and went with every
emotion. Her eyes were of a deep violet color, shaded by dark silken
lashes, though their expression was saddened somewhat just now by a look
of care and anxiety. Her white forehead was surmounted by rich
chestnut-brown hair, which was gathered into a graceful knot at the back
of her finely shaped head. A straight, patrician nose; a small, but rather
resolute mouth, and a rounded chin, in which there was a bewitching
dimple; small, lady-like hands and feet, completed the <i>tout ensemble</i> of
Virginia Abbot, the daughter and only child of a whilom honored and
wealthy bank president of San Francisco.

When addressed, as recorded above, the beautiful girl had started and
grown suddenly pale, and a look of keenest pain shot into her violet eyes.

Then her sweet mouth straightened itself into a stern, resolute line.
There was a moment of solemn silence, which she broke, by saying, in a
repressed but gentle tone:

"I am sorry that you are feeling worse than usual to-night, papa. I know
you must be weary. You are always that after being all day in the mine,
and the storm, of course, aggravates your cough; but if you will rest a
few days you will surely be better."

"No, Virgie, it is useless to build upon false hopes. I shall never be any
better. My work is done. I shall go no more to my claim, and I have
decided to dispose of it to the first one who will offer me a fair price
for it. But, dear child, if it were not for you I believe I should be glad
to know that my saddened life is almost at an end. I----"

The weary voice quivered and failed here, and the man sank back in his
chair with a bitter sigh.

The young girl, her own face now blanched to the hue of death, laid down
her work, arose, and moved swiftly to her father's side, where she knelt
by his chair.

"Papa,