CHAPTER XII.

A PERILOUS CLIMB.


"Is father in?" inquired the young girl of Solomon, as he stood in the
doorway, without moving aside to let Richard pass into the house.

"No, he is not," returned the person addressed, his keen blue eye fixed
suspiciously on the stranger. "As you were so long on your errand, he
gave up his lock-work, and has gone off to the pit. He said he had never
known you loiter so."

"I did not loiter at all," returned the maiden, indignantly; "if it had
not been for the fog, I should have been home an hour ago; but one can't
walk through wool as if it were air. You had the fog here yourselves,
hadn't ye?"

It was strange to note the change in the girl's speech; not only were
her air and tone quite different from what they had been--her modesty or
shyness exchanged for a confidence and even a touch of defiance--but her
phraseology had become blunt and provincial.

"Well, any way he was angered, Harry," returned Solomon, "until I told
him of the new copper lode, as I whispered to you of this morning (you
were the first to learn it, Harry), when off he set, in good-humor