This allusion to Aurora and darkness and rain was thought the most fetching part of the speech, and was the combined effort of the three brainiest men in the camp, one of whom had seen a picture of Aurora in the East. It was received with thunders of applause, during which Elithe began to cry, while the pony broke from the sapling and went curveting around in circles. The men had expected Elithe to cry, and when through her tears she thanked them in the sweet, gracious way natural to her, they were fully satisfied, and felt that their Sunshine was a success. He was soon caught, and, Elithe on his back, galloped several times before her delighted audience, who complimented her by saying she rode as well as a circus rider.
Nearly every four weeks after that while the fine weather lasted Elithe went with her father to Deep Gulch, where she led the singing for the service and played the melodeon which had been bought in Helena and sent to the Gulch for her use. One Sunday morning, about the middle of April, Roger was too ill to rise. He was subject to headache, and a severer one than usual made it almost impossible for him to open his eyes, much less to sit up.
“I am so sorry,” he said, “for the men at the mines will be disappointed. They were anticipating to-day, because I was to take them that music for the Magnificat. I hope they won’t get into mischief. It is three weeks since I was there.”
Elithe, who was bathing his forehead, was silent a moment, and then said: “I’ll take the music and play it for them. Rob can go with me on your horse. I shall be a poor substitute for you, but better than nothing. Shall I go?”
Mr. Hansford hesitated a moment, and then, knowing that she would be just as safe with those rough men as if each were her brother, consented.
“Aren’t you at all afraid?” her mother asked, and Elithe answered, laughingly: “Afraid? No. Why should I be? If I were in a great danger I would go to the miners sooner than to any one else, and then Mrs. Stokes and her mother are there now.”
She was soon ready, looking, as her brother Rob said, “very swell” in her gown of blue flannel and a fanciful little riding cap, trimmed with gilt cord and tassel. It had come in a missionary box the fall previous, and was so becoming to her well-shaped head and short curls that she always wore it to the mines, where the men said she looked like a daisy. It was a glorious day, for the spring was early that year, and both Elithe and Rob felt the exhilaration of the pure mountain air and the fine scenery as they made their way over wild wastes of plains and then struck into the gorge which led to the Deep Gulch, the terminus of their journey.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE STRANGER AT DEEP GULCH.
They found the miners in their Sunday clothes, some sitting on the ground, some on big boulders and piles of debris, some standing, and all smoking and waiting anxiously the arrival of Mr. Hansford. When they saw only Rob, with Elithe, their countenances fell.
“Where’s the parson? Isn’t he coming?” they asked, gathering around Elithe, who told them of her father’s illness, and said she had brought the new music and would play and sing it for them.