such a simple and actually
affectionate performance. It was so plain that his young good looks and
friendly grace of manner reached their hearts at once, and that they were
glad that he had come.

"They _are_ glad you have come," Sheba said afterwards. "You are from the
world over there, you know," waving her hand towards the blue of the
mountains. "We are all glad when we see anything from the outside."

"Would you like to go there?" Rupert asked.

"Yes," she answered, with a little nod of her head. "If Uncle Tom will
go--and you."

They spent almost an hour in the store holding a sort of _levee_. Every
newcomer bade the young fellow welcome and seemed to accept him as a sort
of boon.

"He's a mighty good-lookin' young feller," they all said, and the women
added: "Them black eyes o' his'n an' the way his hair kinks is mighty
purty."

"Their feelings will be hurt if you don't stay a little," said Sheba.
"They want to look at you. You don't mind it, do you?"

"No," he answered, laughing; "it delights me. No one ever wanted to look
at me before. But I should hardly think they would want to look at me
when they might look at you instead."

"They have looked at me for eighteen years," she answered. "They looked
at me when I had the measles, and saw me turn purple when I had the
whooping-cough."

As they were going away, they passed a little man who had just arrived
and was hitching to the horse-rail a raw-boned "clay-bank" mare. He
looked up as they neared him and smiled peacefully.

"Howdy?" he said to Rupert. "Ye hain't seen me afore, but I seen you when
I was to Delisleville. It wuz me as told yer nigger ye'd be a fool if ye
didn't get Tom ter help yer to look up thet thar claim. Ye showed horse
sense by comin'. Wish ye luck."

"Uncle Tom," said Sheba, as they sat at their dinner and Mornin walked
backwards and forwards from the kitchen stove to the dining-room with
chicken fried in cream, hot biscuits, and baked yams, "we saw Mr. Stamps
and he wished us luck."

"He has a claim himself, hasn't he?" said Rupert. "He told Matt it was
for a yoke of oxen."

Tom broke into a melodious roar of laughter.

"Well," he said, "if we can do as well by ours as Stamps will do by his,
we shall be in luck. That yoke of oxen has grown from a small beginning.
If it thrives as it goes on, the Government's in for a big thing."

"It has grown from a calf," said Sheba, "and it wasn't six weeks old."

"A Government mule k