The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras | Page 4

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.
"Yas; 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"--
"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, 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.

A MODERN HERO
It was a very humble house. Only a flat of three rooms on the third
floor of a tall tenement-house in a back street near the river. A bedroom,
a tiny parlor and a kitchen, which was also an eating-room, made up the
suite. The Briggses did all their daylight living in the last-named
apartment. The floor was painted yellow; the walls were whitewashed;
the furniture was homely, substantial and well-kept.
Everything was shining clean, and both windows were full of plants,
many of them in flower. Mrs. Briggs was fully persuaded in her own
mind that no other woman in the city had such a tale of daily mercies as
herself. Among them were the southern exposure of those windows and
the circumstance that a gap in the buildings back of them let in the
sunshine freely. Her nasturtiums blossomed there all winter; from a pot
she had suspended by