It was the first time he had heard her call him by that filial title, or indeed anything more than “Old Smith” or the “Old Man.”  It was the first time in three months that she had spoken of him at all, and the master knew she had kept resolutely aloof from him since her great change.  Satisfied from her manner that it was fruitless to question her purpose, he passively followed.  In out-of-the-way places, low groggeries, restaurants, and saloons; in gambling hells and dance houses, the master, preceded by Mliss, came and went.  In the reeking smoke and blasphemous outcries of low dens, the child, holding the master’s hand, stood and anxiously gazed, seemingly unconscious of all in the one absorbing nature of her pursuit.  Some of the revelers, recognizing Mliss, called to the child to sing and dance for them, and would have forced liquor upon her but for the interference of the master.  Others, recognizing him mutely, made way for them to pass.  So an hour slipped by.  Then the child whispered in his ear that there was a cabin on the other side of the creek crossed by the long flume, where she thought he still might be.  Thither they crossed—­a toilsome half-hour’s walk—­but in vain.  They were returning by the ditch at the abutment of the flume, gazing at the lights of the town on the opposite bank, when, suddenly, sharply, a quick report rang out on the clear night air.  The echoes caught it, and carried it round and round Red Mountain, and set the dogs to barking all along the streams.  Lights seemed to dance and move quickly on the outskirts of the town for a few moments, the stream rippled quite audibly beside them, a few stones loosened themselves from the hillside and splashed into the stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge the branches of the funereal pines, and then the silence seemed to fall thicker, heavier, and deadlier.  The master turned toward Mliss with an unconscious gesture of protection, but the child had gone.  Oppressed by a strange fear, he ran quickly down the trail to the river’s bed, and, jumping from boulder to boulder, reached the base of Red Mountain and the outskirts of the village.  Midway of the crossing he looked up and held his breath in awe.  For high above him on the narrow flume he saw the fluttering little figure of his late companion crossing swiftly in the darkness.

He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights moving about a central point on the mountain, soon found himself breathless among a crowd of awe-stricken and sorrowful men.  Out from among them the child appeared, and, taking the master’s hand, led him silently before what seemed a ragged hole in the mountain.  Her face was quite white, but her excited manner gone, and her look that of one to whom some long-expected event had at last happened—­an expression that to the master in his bewilderment seemed almost like relief.  The walls of the cavern were partly propped by decaying timbers.  The child pointed to what appeared to be some ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late occupant.  The master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent over them.  It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a bullet in his heart, lying beside his empty pocket.