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Drift from Two Shores by Bret Harte
page 72 of 220 (32%)
study of a donkey's head, being none other than the grave features
of Jinny, as once projected timidly over the artist's shoulder.
The preliminaries of this intimacy have never transpired, nor is it
a settled fact if Jinny made the first advances. The result was
only known to the men of Sawyer's Bar by a vision which remained
fresh in their memories long after the gentle lady and her four-
footed friend had passed beyond their voices. As two of the
tunnel-men were returning from work one evening, they chanced to
look up the little trail, kept sacred from secular intrusion, that
led from the cemetery to the settlement. In the dim twilight,
against a sunset sky, they beheld a pale-faced girl riding slowly
toward them. With a delicate instinct, new to those rough men,
they drew closer in the shadow of the bushes until she passed.
There was no mistaking the familiar grotesqueness of Jinny; there
was no mistaking the languid grace of Miss Lawton. But a wreath of
wild roses was around Jinny's neck, from her long ears floated Miss
Jessie's hat ribbons, and a mischievous, girlish smile was upon
Miss Jessie's face, as fresh as the azaleas in her hair. By the
next day the story of this gentle apparition was known to a dozen
miners in camp, and all were sworn to secrecy. But the next
evening, and the next, from the safe shadows of the woods they
watched and drank in the beauty of that fanciful and all
unconscious procession. They kept their secret, and never a
whisper or footfall from these rough men broke its charm or
betrayed their presence. The man who could have shocked the
sensitive reserve of the young girl would have paid for it with his
life.

And then one day the character of the procession changed, and this
little incident having been told, it was permitted that Jinny
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