She looked around for the owner of the pony, while Bill, forgetting his speech, which he held in his hand, said to her: “He’s yours; we all chipped in and bought him of a trader from Butte, and we give him to you with—with—yours respectfully,” he added, with a gasp, remembering that this was what he was to say last. He had forgotten his speech entirely, and stood mortified and aghast at the jeers and groans of his companions. “The speech, Stokes! the speech! Don’t cheat us out of that,” they yelled, while Elithe drew near to her father in alarm, and the pony, frightened at the din, began to snort and pull at his bridle. The speech was quite too fine a piece of composition to be lost. Too many had had a hand in it and were waiting to hear how their ideas sounded to be satisfied without it, and after the confusion had subsided and Mr. Hansford began to comprehend the meaning of the hubbub, he suggested that Bill should be given a chance to deliver it as if nothing had occurred, and, mounted on a barrel, Bill delivered it with a great many flourishes of hands and arms and in a voice which one of the miners said reminded him of a leader in the Salvation Army when he wanted to be heard half a mile away. The pony, Bill said, was called Sunshine, because the beautiful lady who was to be his mistress was the sunshine of the camp, the Aurora of the day, who brought the brightness of the morning with her when she came, and left darkness and rain when she went away. This allusion to Aurora and darkness and rain was thought the most _fetching_ part of the speech, and was the combined effort of the three brainiest men in the camp, one of whom had seen a picture of Aurora in the East. It was received with thunders of applause, during which Elithe began to cry, while the pony broke from the sapling and went curveting around in circles. The men had expected Elithe to cry, and when through her tears she thanked them in the sweet, gracious way natural to her, they were fully satisfied, and felt that their Sunshine was a success. He was soon caught, and, Elithe on his back, galloped several times before her delighted audience, who complimented her by saying she rode as well as a circus rider. Nearly every four weeks after that while the fine weather lasted Elithe went with her father to Deep Gulch, where she led the singing for the service and played the melodeon which had been bought in Helena and sent to the Gulch for her use. One Sunday morning, about the middle of April, Roger was too ill to rise. He was subject to headache, and a severer one than usual made it almost impossible for him to open his eyes, much less to sit up. “I am so sorry,” he said, “for the men at the mines will be disappointed. They were anticipating to-day, because I was to take them that music for the Magnificat. I hope they won’t get into mischief. It is three weeks since I was there.”