But the May sunlight was sweet and gracious, and there lay the dead boy, caressed of that charity of nature and smiling in its glory.
Bill was the first to speak—Bill Merridew, I mean. He was Steve Barclay's partner and both had been wronged most grievously.
"Now throw the other one over, too," cried Bill, savagely. "Let 'em both rot in the gulch!"
But a braver, kindlier man said "No!" It was Three-fingered Hoover, who came forward now and knelt beside the dead boy and held the white face between his hard, brown hands and smoothed the yellowish hair and looked with unspeakable tenderness upon the closed eyes.
"Leave her to me," said he, reverently. "It wuz ez near ez I ever come to lovin' a woman, and I reckon it's ez near ez I ever shell come. So let me do with her ez pleases me."
It was their will to let Three-fingered Hoover have his way. With exceeding tenderness he bore the body back to camp and he gave it into the hands of womenfolk to prepare it for burial, that no man's touch should profane that vestige of his love. You see he chose to think of her to the last as she had seemed to him in life.
And it was another conceit of his to put over the grave, among the hollyhocks on that mountain-side, a shaft of pure white marble bearing simply the words "Miss Woppit."
THE TALISMAN
There was a boy named Wilhelm who was the only son of a widow. He was so devoted and obedient that other people in the village used to be saying always: "What a good son Wilhelm is; how kind he is to his mother." So, while he was the example for all the other boys in the village, he was the pride of his mother, who told him that some day he would marry a princess for having been such a good and dutiful son.