Our Boys Part 14

"Oh, Jim! you are white as snow," cried Madge as she came up.

"White as 'er sunshine, an' blue, an' green too, sisser. Look at brurrer 'all colors,'" piped Little Stumps pitifully.

"O, Jim, Jim--brother Jim, what is the matter?" sobbed Madge.

"Sunstroke," murmured the young man, smiling grimly, like a true Californian. "No; it is not sunstroke, it's--it's cholera," he added in dismay over his falsehood.

Poor boy! he was sorry for this second lie too. He fairly groaned in agony of body and soul.

Oh, how he did hate that pipe! How he did want to get up and jump on it and smash it into a thousand pieces! But he could not get up or turn around or move at all without betraying his unmanly secret.

A couple of miners came up, but Jim feebly begged them to go.

"Sunstroke," whispered the sister.

"No; tolera," piped poor Little Stumps.

"Get out! Leave me!" groaned the young red-shirted miner of the Sierras.

The biggest of the two miners bent over him a moment.

"Yes; it's both," he muttered. "Cholera-nicotine-fantum!" Then he looked at his partner and winked wickedly. Without a word, he took the limp young miner up in his arms and bore him down the hill to his father's cabin, while Stumps and Madge ran along at either side, and tenderly and all the time kept asking what was good for "cholera."

The other old "honest miner" lingered behind to pick up the baleful pipe which he knew was somewhere there; and when the little party was far enough down the hill, he took it up and buried it in his own capacious pocket with a half-sorrowful laugh. "Poor little miner," he sighed.

"Don't ever swear any more, Windy," pleaded the boy to the miner who had carried him down the hill, as he leaned over him, "and don't never lie. I am going to die, Windy, and I should like to be good. Windy, it _ain't_ sunstroke, it's" ...

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE TOOK THE LIMP YOUNG MINER IN HIS ARMS.]

"Hush yer mouth," growled Windy. "I know what 'tis! We've left it on the hill."

The boy turned his face to the wall. The conviction was strong upon him that he was going to die, The world spun round now very, very fast indeed. Finally, half-rising in bed, he called Little Stumps to his side:

"Stumps, dear, good Little Stumps, if I die don't you never try for to smoke; for that's what's the matter with me. No, Stumps--dear little brother Stumps--don't you never try for to go the whole of the 'honest miner,' for it can't be did by a boy! We're nothing but boys, you and I, Stumps--Little Stumps."

He sank back in bed and Little Stumps and his sister cried and cried, and kissed him and kissed him.

The miners who had gathered around loved him now, every one, for daring to tell the truth and take the shame of his folly so bravely.

"I'm going to die, Windy," groaned the boy.

Windy could stand no more of it. He took Jim's hand with a cheery laugh. "Git well in half an hour," said he, "now that you've out with the truth."

And so he did. By the time his father came home he was sitting up; and he ate breakfast the next morning as if nothing had happened. But he never tried to smoke any more as long as he lived. And he never lied, and he never swore any more.

Oh, no! this Jim that I have been telling you of is "Moral Jim," of the Sierras. The mine? Oh, I almost forgot. Well, that blue dirt was the old bed of the stream, and it was ten times richer than where the miners were all at work below. Struck it! I should say so! Ask any of the old Sierras miners about "The Children's Claim," if you want to hear just how rich they struck it.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

OLD G.o.dFREY'S RELIC.

A simple, upright man was he, Of spirit undefiled, Cheerful and hale at seventy-three, As any blithesome child.

Old G.o.dfrey's friends and neighbors felt His due was honest praise; Ofttimes how fervently they dwelt On his brave words and ways!

He had no foeman in the land Whose deeds or tongue would gall; Of guileless heart, of liberal hand, He smiled on one and all.

But most, I think, he smiled on me; "Your eyes, dear boy," he said, "Remind me, though not mournfully, Of eyes whose light is dead."

How oft beneath his roof I've been On eves of wintry blight, And heard his magic violin Make musical the night.

No consort by his board was set, No child his hearth had known, Yet of all souls I've ever met, His seemed the least alone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Keen Memories of the Thrilling Years That Thronged His Ocean Life.]

What stories in my eager ears He poured of peace or strife; Keen memories of the thrilling years That thronged his ocean life.

And oh, he showed such marvellous things From unknown sea and sh.o.r.e, That, brimmed with strange imaginings, My boy's brain bubbled o'er!

It wandered back o'er many a track Of his old life-toil free; The enchanted calm, the fiery wrack, Far off, far off at sea!

For once he dared the watery world, O'er wild or halcyon waves, And saw his snow-white sails unfurled Above a million graves.

Northward he went, thro' ice and sleet, Where soon the sunbeams fail, And followed with an armed fleet The wide wake of the whale.

Southward he went through airs serene Of soft Sicilian noon, And sang, on level decks, between The twilight and the moon.

But once--it was a tranquil time, An evening half divine, When the low breeze like murmurous rhyme Sighed through the sunset fine.

Once, G.o.dfrey from the secret place Wherein his treasures lay, Brought forth, with calmly museful face, This relic to the day--

A soft tress with a silken tie, A brightly shimmering curl; Such as might shadow goldenly The fair brow of a girl.

"Oh, lovelier," cried I, "than the dawn Auroral mists enfold, The long and luminous threadlets drawn Through this rich curl of gold!

"Tell, tell me, o'er whose graceful head You saw the ringlet shine?"

Thereon the old man coolly said, "_Why, lad, the tress is mine!_

"Look not amazed, but come with me, And let me tell you where And how, one morning fearfully, I lost that lock of hair."

He led me past his cottage screen Of flowers, far down the wood Where, towering o'er the landscape green, A centuried oak-tree stood.

"Here is the place," he said, "whereon Heaven helped me in sore strait, And in a March morn's radiance wan Turned back the edge of fate!

"My father a stout yeoman was, And I, in childish pride, That morning through the dew-drenched gra.s.s, Walked gladly by his side,