Alas! the clean pan showed only one or two minute glistening yellow scales, like pinheads, adhering from their specific gravity to the bottom; gold, indeed, but merely enough to indicate “the color,” and common to ordinary prospecting in his own locality.
He tried another panful with the same result. He became aware that the pan was leaky, and that infinite care alone prevented the bottom from falling out during the washing. Still it was an experiment, and the result a failure.
Fleming was too old a prospector to take his disappointment seriously. Indeed, it was characteristic of that performance and that period that failure left neither hopelessness nor loss of faith behind it; the prospector had simply miscalculated the exact locality, and was equally as ready to try his luck again. But Fleming thought it high time to return to his own mining work in camp, and at once set off to return the pan to its girlish owner and recover his ring.
As he approached the cabin again, he heard the sound of singing. It was evidently the girl's voice, uplifted in what seemed to be a fragment of some negro camp-meeting hymn:—
“Dar was a poor man and his name it was Lazarum,
Lord bress de Lamb—glory hallelugerum!
Lord bress de Lamb!”
The first two lines had a brisk movement, accented apparently by the clapping of hands or the beating of a tin pan, but the refrain, “Lord bress de Lamb,” was drawn out in a lugubrious chant of infinite tenuity.
“The rich man died and he went straight to hellerum.
Lord bress de Lamb—glory hallelugerum!
Lord bress de Lamb!”
Fleming paused at the cabin door. Before he could rap the voice rose again:—
“When ye see a poo' man be sure to give him crumbsorum,
Lord bress de Lamb—glory hallelugerum!
Lord bress de Lamb!”
At the end of this interminable refrain, drawn out in a youthful nasal contralto, Fleming knocked. The girl instantly appeared, holding the ring in her fingers. “I reckoned it was you,” she said, with an affected briskness, to conceal her evident dislike at parting with the trinket. “There it is!”