"Boys heard ye singin' yesterday," said Sim.
"Yes?" inquired Mrs. Blizzer.
"Yes—all of 'em delighted," said Sim, gallantly. "But ye don't believe in no sich stuff, I s'pose, do ye?"
"What stuff?" asked Mrs. Blizzer.
"Why, 'bout heaven an' hell, an' the Bible, an' all them things. Do ye know what the Greek fur hell meant? An' do ye know the Bible's all the time contradictin' itself?" I can show ye—"
"I tell you what I do know, Mr. Ripson," said the woman; "I know some things in my heart that no mortal bein' never told me, an' they couldn't be skeered out by all the dictionaries an' commentators a-goin; that's what I know."
And Mrs. Blizzer departed, while the astonished theologian sheepishly admitted that he owed drinks to the crowd.
While the ex-deacon, Uncle Ben, was trying to determine to go home, he found quite a pretty nugget that settled his mind, and he announced that same night, at the store, that all his mining property was for sale, as he was going back East.
"I'll go with you, Uncle Ben," said Fourteenth Street.
The crowd was astounded; men of Fourteenth Street's calibre seldom had pluck enough to go to the mines, and their getting away, or their doing any thing that required manliness, was of still more unfrequent occurrence.