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For nearly a week the wan little foundling, emerging from the vale of shadows at the home of Miss Dennihan, lay as if debating, in his grave, baby way, the pros and cons of existence. And even when, at last, he was well on the road to recovery, he somehow seemed more quiet than ever before.
Hour after hour of the darkness went by and found him searching still. With the coming of the morning he suddenly grasped at a startling thought. Miss Doc! Miss Dennihan! She must have stolen his foundling! Her recent climb to his cabin, her protracted stay, her baffled curiosity these were ample explanation for the trick she must have played!
For the next three or four days the tiny bit of a man at Miss Doc's seemed neither to be worse nor better of his ailment. The hand of lethargy lay with dulling weight upon him. Old Jim and Miss Dennihan were baffled, though their tenderness increased and their old animosity disappeared, forgotten in the stress of care.
A number of the men of the camp came to visit there again that evening. "We thought little Skeezucks might be lonesome," they explained. So often as the door was opened, the pup and the grave little pilgrim clothed these days in the little white frock Miss Dennihan had made looked up, ever in the hope, of espying again those three red caps. The men saw the wistfulness increase in the baby's face.
The three men waited near the house for half an hour more, but in vain. It was then within an hour of midnight. Slowly, at last, they turned away, but had gone no more than half a dozen rods when they met the bar-keep, Doc Dennihan, Lufkins the teamster, and four other men of the camp, who were coming to see if Jim had yet returned.
Jim and the preacher, with the pup, however, went at once to the home of Miss Dennihan, where the children were all thus early engaged in starting off the day of romping and fun. The lunch that came along at noon, and the dinner that the happy Miss Doc prepared at dusk, were mere interruptions in the play of the tiny Carson and the lively little girls.
He understood almost nothing of what it meant to have his visitors clamber into the carriage, nevertheless a grave little query came into his eyes. "Well, Jim, good-bye again," said Stowe, and he shook the old miner's hand a final time. "Good-bye, Miss Dennihan good-bye, boys."
They were Bone and Webber, Keno and Field, Doc Dennihan, the carpenter, the teamster, and other rough but faithful men who had guarded the claim against invasion in the night. There is something fine in a party of men when no one brags of a fight brought sternly to victory.
The chill and crispness of the air seemed a part of those early rays of light. In sight of the home of Doc and Miss Dennihan, they paused and stepped behind a fence, for the door of the neat little house was open and the lady herself was sweeping off the steps, with the briskness inseparable from her character. She presently disappeared, but the door, to Jim's relief, was left standing open.
"You're goin' away from fussy old me to where you'll be right happy." At least a dozen men of the camp came plodding along behind the horse, that arrived at the same time Jim, the pup, and Keno appeared at the Dennihan home. Doc Dennihan had cut off his customary period of rest and sleep, to say good-bye, with the others, to the pilgrims about to depart.
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