"He'll be back."
"Spare his journey! It will do him no good. The Indian did me a kindness, I tell you!"
"Well, anyways, they're both off on the same journey now, and who knows what or which? They both may be three hundred years old before they find a mountain of gold. But to think--I had your chunk of gold right in my own hands, but didn't know it! The same gold my mother's wedding ring was made of, that was mine. It's right thin now, child. You could of made a dozen out of that lump, like enough."
"I'll never need one, mother," said Molly Wingate.
[pg 332]
The girl, weeping, threw her arms about her mother's neck. "You ask why I kept the secret, even then. He kissed me, mother--and he was a thief!"
"Yes, I know. A man he just steals a girl's heart out through her lips. Yore paw done that way with me once. Git up, Dan! You, Daisy!
"And from that time on," she added laughing, "I been trying to forget him and to live him down!"