“John Pennington, he says, though the Lord knows if that’s so. We have so many names here that don’t belong to us, but I reckon this is genuine,” Stokes replied. “His close is marked ‘J. P.’ Lizy Ann has washed his shirts and things,—all store shirts, fine as a fiddle, with gold studs in his cuffs and a diamond collar button, and a big diamond on his little finger. I’ve got the studs and collar button safe. The ring I left on him, for he wouldn’t let me take it off. He came into camp a week ago,—from New York, I reckon, and he wanted to go snucks in a mine to pay a debt of honor. That’s what he told me. Some of us let him go to digging on pay, but, my Lord, he was that shaky in his legs he could hardly stan’; was just gittin’ over a bender, for I put it to him and he owned up, and said it was his last,—he’d sworn off, and was goin’ to reform. Reform! He couldn’t do that, nor work, neither, and in less than three days he was down with the very old Harry, tearin’ and yellin’, so’s we had to hold him to keep the devils he said was after him from gettin’ him. He’s quieter now, but keeps mutterin’ and repeatin’ your father’s name.” “My father’s name! How did he know it?” Elithe asked, and Stokes replied: “Heard us talkin’ of expectin’ him; there’s no other way. Lizy Ann is great on religion, and she told him the parson was comin’ and as’t if he’d like to see him. He swore awful then that no parson should come near him, and that’s about the size of it as it stan’s. He’s asleep now in Lizy Ann’s bunk.” “I’d like to see him,” Elithe said. But Stokes hesitated. “I do’ know ‘bout it. He cusses some now, and mebby your father wouldn’t like to have you hear such words. Our cussin’ can’t hold a candle to his’n, which is kind of genteel like and makes you squirm.” “Still, I’d like to see him,” Elithe persisted, and Stokes led the way into his cabin, the most comfortable one in the camp. On a cot in a corner of the room a young man lay asleep, with marks of dissipation and suffering on his face, which, in spite of the dissipation, was a handsome one. His hands, on one of which the diamond ring was showing, were lying outside the sheet and were whiter than Elithe’s. “Them hands never done no work,” Stokes whispered, pointing to them. “He’s a New Yorker sure.” Elithe’s ideas of New Yorkers were not very clear, but she accepted Stokes’s theory as correct, and sitting down by the bed said to Mrs. Stokes: “You look tired. Go out into the fresh air a while. I will stay here.”