"Me go home, all same Missie Joe?" Hop Sing raised an expressionless
face and glared at the broad belt of the sheriff.

"Well, you can go, but I'm going to keep an eye on you and see that your
apron's hanging in the Halstead's kitchen every day of your heathen
life."

Later that night when Rand started home, strange incantations were going
on in Sing's lean-to. In four china bowls punk was burning, and an old
Chinaman was muttering weird invocations over the clothes of Digger Dan
slowly smouldering in a coal-oil can in the middle of the floor. Hop
Sing held one hand in the smoke, raised the other aloft and made a
blood-curdling oath of some sort which, by the expression of his face,
probably consigned the owner forever more to the nethermost depths 'of
Tophet.

"Why, where is Ali Sing?" asked Jo the next morning, when she found the
tall slave still in the kitchen.

"He got heap sick cousin. He go way. I stay. He come back bime-by." Jo
knew that it was useless to question further.

The summer drifted by and still Sing did not return. Rand walked in one
day with the first flurry of snow, from his claim in the south. He
caught both of Jo's hands in his without a word, kissed them tenderly
and let them go.

"Rand," she faltered, "it is so long since I've heard from you. You have
been acting so strangely-for months!"