dead. Judge Spragg has lost four. In all about sixteen children have
gone and five adults. That's Paradise alone; in the foothills----"

"What brings you here?"

It seemed hopeless to soften this hardened old man. I had thought of a
dozen phrases wherewith to soap the ways, so to speak, down which
might be launched my petition. I forgot them all, confronted by those
malicious, sneering eyes, by the derisive, snarling grin.

"Little Sissy Leadham is dying."

"What d'you say?"

"Little Sissy Leadham is dying."

For my life I could not determine whether the news moved him or not.

"Wal?"

"And she's asking for you."

"Askin'--fer me?"

At last I had gripped his attention and interest.

"Why?"

"She wants to give you her money."

"Then it wa'n't a plant? 'Twa'n't fixed up atween you boys an' her?"

"It was her own idea--an idea so strong that it has taken possession
of her poor wandering wits altogether."

"Is that so?" He moistened his lips. "And you--ye've come up here to
ask me to go down there, into that p'isonous Paradise, because a
little girl who ain't nothin' to me wants to give me three dollars and
a half?"

"If you get there in time it may save her life."

"An' s'pose I lose mine--hey?"

I shrugged my shoulders. He stared at me as if I were a strange
animal, clicking his teeth and twisting his fingers.

"Look ye here," he burst out, angrily, with a curious note of surprise
and petulance in his voice, "you an' that brother o' yours know me,
old Pap Spooner, purty doggoned well. Hev ye heard anyone ever speak a
good word fer me?"

"No one except--the schoolmarm."

"An' what did she say?"

"She reckoned you must have thought the world of your own little
girl."

He paid no attention. Suddenly he said, irrelevantly--

"That dime little Sissy give me is the first gift I've had made me in
thirty-five year. Wal, young man, ye must ha' known--didn't ye now?--
that you was takin' big chances in comin' after ole Pap Spooner. I'll
bet the hull crowd down in Paradise laughed at the idee o' fetchin'
me--hey?"

"Nobody laughs in Paradise now, and nobody except my brother, the
doctor, and Sissy's father knows that I've come after you."

"Ye'll ride back and say the old man was skeered--hey?"

"Well, you are, aren't you?"

"Yes; I've enough sense to know when I am skeered. I'm skeered plum to
death, but all the same I'm a-goin' back with you, because Sissy give
me that dime. There's a sack o