Melissa Smith--Smith's motherless child.

"What can she want here?" thought the master. Everybody knew "Mliss,"
as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red Mountain.
Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, ungovernable
disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character, were in their way
as proverbial as the story of her father's weaknesses, and as
philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought
the schoolboys with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She
followed the trails with a woodman's craft, and the master had met
her before, miles away, shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded on the
mountain road. The miners' camps along the stream supplied her with
subsistence during these voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms.
Not but that a larger protection had been previously extended to Mliss.
The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, "stated" preacher, had placed her in the
hotel as servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced
her to his scholars at Sunday school. But she threw plates occasionally
at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the
guests, and created in the Sabbath school a sensation that was so
inimical to the orthodox dullness and placidity of that institution
that, with a decent regard for the starched frocks and unblemished
morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children of the first families,
the reverend gentleman had her ignominiously expelled. Such were the
antecedents, and such the character of Mliss as she stood before the
master. It was shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and bleeding
feet, and asked his pity. It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and
commanded his respect.

"I come here tonight," she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her hard
glance on his, "because I knew you was alone. I wouldn't come here when