“Oh, I don’t want it to kill you; this won’t hurt you; will you do it, Mr. Brush?”
“Yes, God helping me.”
“Do like Mr. Ruggles.”
“How’s that?” asked the parson with a sinking heart.
“Don’t drink any more of that red water, which makes men talk loud and sometimes say bad words.”
“Heavens!” thought the parson; “she little dreams what she is asking me, but it is not she but some One who is thus calling me back to duty. Yes, my child, I will do what you ask.”
“You is as good and nice as you can be now, but then you will be a good deal gooder and nicer,” said she, warmly kissing him.
“I hope so,” he added, rising to his feet, with the feeling that he was not himself but some one else, and that that some one else was the young man away among the distant hills of Missouri, before he wandered to the West, and in doing so, wandered from the path along which he had attempted to guide and lead others.
“I call myself her teacher,” he mused, as he reached down and took the tiny hand in his own, “but she is the teacher and I am the pupil.”
They had started in the direction of the cabins, when they heard curious shouts and outcries in that direction. 82 “There’s something strange going on down there,” he said, peering toward the point; “I wonder what it can be; let us hurry and find out.”