Shake, shake, shake. It was of no use. Something had fallen from his blue blouse, but it was not gold. He stood the little man down, with the other end up, and was a bit angry that he did not go on smiling as before. He stooped, and picked up the little black object that had been shaken from the brown little fellow before him. The Parson began to swear. It was only a little ten-cent Testament, in diamond type, with a cloth cover. The Parson put his head to one side, filliped the leaves with his thumb and finger, and then, feeling perfectly certain that it did not belong to any of the boys in the camp, and equally certain that it was not an article that he cared to carry around loose with him, he filliped the leaves again, and, handing it back to Washee-Washee, said, "Git!" The Parson took one end of the trail, and the little pagan the other. A Missourian who lay in his bunk up against the wall, smoking his pipe of "pigtail" after supper, looked out from his cabin window through the wood and up towards the Parson's cabin, where the trail wound on the hill-side above him. "It's a thunderin' and a lightnin' like cats and dogs. There's a-gwyne to be a storm to-night." But it was only the Parson swearing at his bad luck and that Chinaman. "Only a Testament!" Then an idea struck him like an inspiration. Did not the good little Widow give the brown wretch this thing? He stopped swearing, stood still in the trail a moment, and then, giving a long whistle as he drew a long breath, he went on to his cabin in silence. That Testament troubled the Parson. There was not much religion in the Forks. There was little sign of anything of that kind among the men of the Sierras. Perhaps there were other Testaments hidden away under the bunks of the miners, but they were never visible. I know of one, the gift of a good mother, that forever refused to get lost, or wear out, or disappear under any circumstances. Other books would get themselves borrowed and never come back, other books would get themselves thrummed and thumbed, the backs torn off, and the leaves torn out, but this one little book with its black, modest cover was always the same. It looked as new and nice, as ready to be read, as full of hope and promise, after ten years of service in the Sierras, as it did the day it first nestled down in the bottom of the carpet-bag to wait patiently for the prodigal to return and feed upon its glorious promises. But the presence of this book had a wider meaning than all this to the Parson. Williams had been a sort of Calvin. He was a terrible religious enthusiast. It was his devotion, his misled enthusiasm, that made him take part in the persecution and death of the so-called prophet. It was that which brought the awful persecution upon him and his. The children, it was said, inherited their father's religious zeal.