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He sat down with a sense of relief; he could face his partners again without disloyalty; he could see that pretty little figure once more without the compunction of having incurred her father’s prejudices by locating a permanent claim so near his cabin. In fact, he could carry out his partners’ fancy to the letter!

He quickly heaped his implements together and turned to leave the wood; but he was confronted by a figure that at first he scarcely recognized. Yet–it was Katinka! the young girl of the cabin, who had sent him the gold. She was dressed differently–perhaps in her ordinary every-day garments–a bright sprigged muslin, a chip hat with blue ribbons set upon a coil of luxurious brown hair. But what struck him most was that the girlish and diminutive character of the figure had vanished with her ill-fitting clothes; the girl that stood before him was of ordinary height, and of a prettiness and grace of figure that he felt would have attracted anywhere. Fleming felt himself suddenly embarrassed,–a feeling that was not lessened when he noticed that her pretty lip was compressed and her eyebrows a little straightened as she gazed at him.

“Ye made a bee line for the woods, I see,” she said coldly. “I allowed ye might have been droppin’ in to our house first.”

“So I should,” said Fleming quickly, “but I thought I ought to first make sure of the information you took the trouble to send me.” He hesitated to speak of the ill luck he had just experienced; he could laugh at it himself–but would she?

“And ye got a new pan?” she said half poutingly.

Here seemed his opportunity. “Yes, but I’m afraid it hasn’t the magic of yours. I haven’t even got the color. I believe you bewitched your old pan.”

Her face flushed a little and brightened, and her lip relaxed with a smile. “Go ‘long with yer! Ye don’t mean to say ye had no luck to-day?”

“None–but in seeing you.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Ye see, I said all ‘long ye weren’t much o’ a miner. Ye ain’t got no faith. Ef ye had as much as a grain o’ mustard seed, ye’d remove mountains; it’s in the Book.”

“Yes, and this mountain is on the bedrock, and my faith is not strong enough,” he said laughingly. “And then, that would be having faith in Mammon, and you don’t want me to have THAT.”

She looked at him curiously. “I jest reckon ye don’t care a picayune whether ye strike anything or not,” she said half admiringly.

“To please you I’ll try again, if you’ll look on. Perhaps you’ll bring me luck as you did before. You shall take the pan. I will fill it and you shall wash it out. You’ll be my MASCOT.”

She stiffened a little at this, and then said pertly, “Wot’s that?”

“My good fairy.”

She smiled again, this time with a new color in her pale face. “Maybe I am,” she said, with sudden gravity.

He quickly filled the pan again with soil, brought it to the spring, and first washed out the greater bulk of loose soil. “Now come here and kneel down beside me,” he said, “and take the pan and do as I show you.”

She knelt down obediently. Suddenly she lifted her little hand with a gesture of warning. “Wait a minit–jest a minit–till the water runs clear again.”

The pool had become slightly discolored from the first washing.

“That makes no difference,” he said quickly.

“Ah! but wait, please!” She laid her brown hand upon his arm; a pleasant warmth seemed to follow her touch. Then she said joyously, “Look down there.”

“Where?” he asked.

“There–don’t ye see it?”

“See what?”

“You and me!”

He looked where she pointed. The pool had settled, resumed its mirror-like calm, and reflected distinctly, not only their two bending faces, but their two figures kneeling side by side. Two tall redwoods rose on either side of them, like the columns before an altar.