“Oh, go ’way with your Gospel and Epistle. I had enough of them when I was a boy. Sing something.” “What shall I sing?” Elithe asked, and, after considering a moment, he said: “‘Anna Rooney’ is pretty good. Know it?” Elithe was horrified, and showed it in her face. “Oh, I see,” he continued. “Anna isn’t a Sunday girl. Well, suit yourself: only don’t make it too pious. I’m not that kind.” Elithe was puzzled till a happy thought came to her like an inspiration, and she began the familiar words, “Sowing the seed by the wayside fair, Sowing the seed by the noonday glare.” The effect was magical. Closing his eyes, the sick man lay perfectly still until she reached the words, “Gathered in time or eternity, Sure, oh, sure, will the harvest be.” Then two great tears rolled down his cheeks as he whispered: “I’m ashamed to cry, but something in your voice compels it, and I’m thinking of what I have sown and what I am reaping, and wondering what the future harvest will be for me.” Elithe felt a little afraid of him, but with this glimpse of his better side her fear vanished, and she sang whatever she thought he would like until he fell into a quiet sleep and she went out to find a storm coming down the mountains with great rapidity. It was not a shower, but a driving rain, which fell in sheets and continued with little abatement until sunset. Then it was so dark that it was not thought safe for her to start for home, as the streams she must cross were sure to be swollen, and possibly a log bridge carried away. “Your folks will know why you stayed, for it must have rained there as hard as here. The clouds all went that way,” Mr. Stokes said to Elithe, whose chief concern was for the anxiety at home when she did not come. She had never spent a night in the camp, and there came over her a feeling of intense loneliness, amounting almost to homesickness, as she looked out into the darkness, through which a few lights were shining here and there, while occasionally a miner passed, wrapped in his big cape, with the water dripping from his broad-brimmed hat. “Where in the world shall I sleep?” she thought, knowing that Mr. Pennington was occupying the most comfortable room in the camp. This difficulty was settled by Mr. Pennington himself. He had been awake for some time, and was growing very restless, with the rain beating against the cabin and the wind roaring through the valley. The demons were coming to carry him away, he said, fighting with his arms in the air and bidding them go back to the infernal regions until he was ready, when he would send them a postal. Then he began to clamor for Elithe, and grew so excited and violent that she went to him at last and asked what she could do for him. “Sit where I can see your face and then sing,—not ‘Sowing the seed,’ I’ve sown a ton and am reaping the result. If you don’t like ‘Annie Rooney,’ sing what you please, only sing.”