he stumbled. Which caused the children to laugh again--a laugh in which
Miss Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek.
The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as
mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.

Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions.
"Profane Bill," driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in the
newspapers for his "gallantry" in invariably offering the box seat to
the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention, on the ground
that he had a habit of "cussin' on upgrades," and gave her half the
coach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden
with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a
confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The overdressed mother
of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this
astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but
content to worship the priestess from afar.

With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue skies,
glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights passed over Red
Gulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the sedate and proper woods.
Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors of
the firs "did her chest good," for certainly her slight cough was less
frequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had learned the unending
lesson which the patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedful
or listless ears. And so, one day, she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill,
and took the children with her. Away from the dusty road, the straggling
shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless engines, the cheap
finery of shop windows, the deeper glitter of paint and colored glass,
and the thin veneering which barbarism takes upon itself in such
localities--what infinite relief was theirs! The last heap of ragged