“No—­it doesn’t,” Stowe agreed.

“And yet, it must have been in some such way little Skeezucks came to be among the Injuns,” Jim reflected, aloud.  Then in a moment he added; “I’m glad you told me, parson.  I know now the low-down brute that sent him off with the Piute hunters can’t never come to Borealis and take him away.”

And yet, all through their homely breakfast old Jim was silently thinking.  A newer tenderness for the innocent, deserted little pilgrim was welling in his heart.

Keno, having declared his intention of shovelling off the snow and opening up a trench to uncover the gold-ledge of the miner’s claim, departed briskly when the meal was presently finished.  Jim and the preacher, with the pup, however, went at once to the home of Miss Dennihan, where the children were all thus early engaged in starting off the day of romping and fun.

The lunch that came along at noon, and the dinner that the happy Miss Doc prepared at dusk, were mere interruptions in the play of the tiny Carson and the lively little girls.

There never has been, and there never can be, a measure of childish happiness, but surely never was a child in the world more happy than the quaint little waif who had sat all alone that bright November afternoon in the brush where the Indian pony had dropped him.  All the games they had tried on the previous day were repeated anew by the youngsters, and many freshly invented were enjoyed, including a romp in the snow, with the sled that one of the miners had fashioned for the Christmas-tree.

That evening a larger contingent of the men who hungered for the atmosphere of home came early to the little house and joined in the games.  Laughter made them all one human family, and songs were sung that took them back to farms and clearings and villages, far away in the Eastern States, where sweethearts, mothers, wives, and sisters ofttimes waited and waited for news of a wanderer, lured far away by the glint of silver and gold.  The notes of birds, the chatter of brooks, the tinkle of cow-bells came again, with the dreams of a barefoot boy.

Something of calm and a newer hope and fresher resolution was vouchsafed to them all when the wholesome young preacher held a homely service, in response to their earnest request.

“Life is a mining for gold,” said he, “and every human breast is a mother-lode of the precious metal—­if only some one can find the out-croppings, locate a claim, and come upon the ledge.  There are toils, privations, and sufferings, which the search for gold brings forever in its train.  There are pains and miseries and woe in the search for the gold in men, but, boys, it’s a glorious life!  There is something so honest, so splendid, in taking the metal from the earth!  No one is injured, every one is helped.  And when the gold in a man is found, think what a gift it is to the world and to God!  I am a miner myself, but I make no gold.  It is there, in the hill, or in the man, where God has put it away, and all that you and I can do is to work, though our hands be blistered and our hearts be sore, until we come upon the treasure at the last.  We hasten here, and we scramble there, wheresoever the glint seems brightest, the field most promising; but the gold I seek is everywhere, and, boys, there is gold on gold in Borealis!