The little dreamer, the boy-poet, was once more seen on the trail with his pick and pan looking for gold in the earth by day, for gold in the skies at night. But never a word did he whisper of the awful threat of the Parson.
CHAPTER X.
A SCENE IN THE SIERRAS.
To the amazement of all the Forks, one day, when a bearded man in gum boots, slouch hat, and blue shirt, reached in at the Widow's for his washing, the hand that reached it out was not the Widow's. It was the little brown lazy hand of Washee-Washee.
Of course the camp did not like this. This Chinaman to them was a sort of eclipse, a dark body passing between the miners and their sun. They remonstrated, and the Parson bore the remonstrance to the Widow in a speech of his own; and, to his own great surprise it was not ornamented with a single oath.
"The Forks began his reformation; let me go on with it. Why not?" answered the woman.
"You will be plundered."
"Of what?"
The Parson looked at the gold nuggets on the mantel-piece, and shifted the quid of tobacco from right to left.