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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
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