d serious, and hurried to the door. She saw a man in
shabby clothing and with unkempt beard and hair, yet with a not
unpleasing expression.

"Madame," said he, "I'm a loafer, but I've been a gentleman, and I know
better than to intrude without a good cause. The cause is a dying man.
He's as rough and worthless as I am, but all the roughness has gone out
of him, just now, and he's thinking about his mother and a sweetheart he
used to have. He wants some one to pray for him--some one as unlike
himself and his associates as possible. He cried for his mother--then he
whispered to me that he had seen, here in Smithton, a lady that looked
like an angel--seen her driving only to-day. He meant you. He isn't
pretty; but, when a _dying_ man says a lady is an angel, he means what
he says."

Two or three moments later Miss Fewne, with a very pale face, and with
her brother-in-law as escort, was following Brownie. The door of the
saloon was thrown open, and when the Enders saw who was following
Brownie they cowered and fell back as if a sheriff with his _posse_ had
appeared. The lady looked quickly about her, until her eye rested upon
the figure of the wounded man; him she approached, and as she looked
down her lip began to tremble.

"I didn't mean it," whispered Baggs, self-depreciation and pain striving
for the possession of his face. "If I hadn't have been a-goin', I
shouldn't have thought of such a thing, but dyin' takes away one's
reg'lar senses. It's not my fault, ma'am, but when I thought about what
mother used to say about heaven, _you_ came into my mind. I felt as if I
was insultin' you just by thinkin' about you--a feller such as me to be
thinking about such a lady. I tried to see mother an' Liz, my
sweetheart that was, just as I've seen 'em when my eyes was shut, but I
couldn't see nothin' but you, the way you looked goin' along that road
and makin' the End look bright. I'd shoot myself for the imperdence of
the thing if I was goin' to get well again, but I ain't. Ther needs to
be a word said for me by somebody--somebody that don't chaw, nor drink,
nor swear--somebody that'll catch God's eye if He happens to be lookin'
down--and I never saw that kind of a person in Smithton till to-day."

Mabel stood speechless, with a tear in each eye.

"Don't, if you don't think best," continued Baggs. "I'd rather go to--to
t'other place than bother a lady. Don't speak a word, if you don't want
to; but mebbe you'll _think_ the leas