"Wal, you start her bilin'," replied the teamster.
The young fellow blushed, but he nerved himself to the point and sang out, nervously at first, and then, when his confidence increased, in a clear, ringing tenor of remarkable purity, recalling the old-time words that once were so widely known and treasured:
"'There's a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar,
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling-place there.'"
Then the chorus of voices, husky from neglect and crude from lack of culture, joined in the chorus, with a heartiness that shook the dingy building:
"'In the sweet by-and-by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by-and-by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.'"
They followed this with what they knew of "Home, Sweet Home," and so at last strolled out into the sunshine of the street, and surrounded the quaint little foundling, as he looked from one to another in baby gravity and sat in his timid way on the arm of "Bruvver Jim."
"I'll tell you what," said the blacksmith, "now that we've found that we can do the job all right, we'll get up a Christmas for little Skeezucks that will lift the mountains clean up off the earth!"
"Good suggestion," Jim agreed. "But the little feller feels tired now.
I am goin' to take him home."
And this he did. But after lunch no fewer than twenty of the men of Borealis climbed up the trail to get another look at the quiet little man who glorified the cabin.
But the darkness had only begun to creep through the lowermost channels of the canyons when Skeezucks fell asleep. By then old Jim, the pup, and Keno were alone with the child.