Los Angeles herald., 1891-04-15
TIE Los ANGELES WEDNESDAY MORNING APRIL ts 1891

but King Billy was now awake, and was
slouching lazily off toward the bush.
Effie laughed as she saw him--his great
heed bent forward, and his thin, narrow
shoulders bowed She laughed to think
of his laziness, and that he should look
so tired after such very little wood
chopping
She was still laughing at King Billy
as she opened the old workbox to take
another peep at the yellow treasure, and
to make quite sure that the heat hadn't
melted it away. And it was quite slow
ly that the laugh died from the pretty
eyes and mouth quite slowly, because
of the moments it took to realize and ac-
cept misfortune so terrible-when she
lifted the coarse socks and looked and
saw no little gold nugget--saw nothing.
Then horror and great fear grew in the
blue eyes, and pale agony crept over the
childish face and made it old, and the
poor little heart seemed to stop beating.
Fffie said nothing and made no cry,
but she closed her eyes tightly for a
moment, and looked in the box again.
No, it was no illusion; the little nugget
was not there-the first gold her father
had found, which had been intrusted to
her care, which was to have been taken
to her mother-it was gone. She put
down the box quite quietly and walked
out into the day, but the sun was shin
ing very strangely and mistily now, and
the blue sky had grown black, and the
trees seemed to move weirdly, and the
locusts had ceased humming from fear,
but the strange bird was somewhere
near shrieking brokenly: "What will
father say? What will father say?"
But as the child stood there, despair
ing, her sight grew clearer, and she saw
a black figure among the trees and she
was conscious of pair of dusky eyes
watching her through the leaves. Then
only she remembered and she knew who
had done this cruel thing. King Billy!
And she had been kind to him. Effie
suddenly burst into passionate sobbing.
The black figure still hovered among
the trees, often changing its position,
and the dusky eyes still peered through
the leaves, and the laughing iackasses
flew down to the old tree again, and
laughed more madly than before
laughed at Effie's trust-at Billy's graft
tude!
1t was 10 o'clock, and darkness and
quiet reigned in John Archer's hut.
Over among the tents behind the waffle
gums few gamblers and heavy drink
ers were still awake, and their voices,
raised in anger or ribald merriment,
might occasionally have been family
heard from the hut. But Archer, who
had sown his wild oats, was true
worker; and he had his little daughter,
for whose sake he had built the hut away
from the noisy camp.
Archer had come home late and weary,
as usual, had eaten his supper and gone
to rest without, to Effie's intense relief,
speaking of the little gold nugget The
child was afraid to speak of the loss, and
she was not without vague hopes that a
benefcent providence would restore the
nugget during the darkness and save her
from this great trouble.
For this she prayed very earnestly be-
fore she lay down to sleep. Or did she
sleep at all that night? She never quite
knew. But she thinks that it was then
that she first experienced that terrible,
purgatorial condition which is neither
wakefulness nor sleep, when the body
and mind are weary enough to bring
the profound sleep which they require,
but which the brain is too overladen
and too cruelty active to allow; when
dreams seem realities and realities
dreams. 1t must have been dream
when she saw something small and yel-
low float through the tiny window on
the ghostly silver moonbeams And
yet, when, having closed her eyes, she
opened them again, it was still there
lowering about in the darkness-less
bright now, and with pale yellow halo.
But it faded quite away; it was a cruel,
mocking dream.
Then was it dream when the old cur
tain which divided her corner of the hut
from her fathers moved near the ground
-bulged slightly toward her? 1t would
be curious to see, and she lay still.
From under the curtain seemed to come
thin arm, and slowly, cautiously, after
the arm, a head with a great shock Of
hair. And the moonbeams just touched
face. think they kissed it, though it
was black, for they found in a black
hand the little yellow object which had
foated in the first dream.
1t was all SO real, SO beautiful, that
the child lay still, scarce daring to
breathe lest the vision should melt away,
and when in her dream came the voice
of her father, with the words, "Speak
or I'll fireP' her lips refused to open.
But it was no dream when the shot
came, and the Black King rolled over on
the earth, dead, with the little gold mug
get he had come to restore pressed in the
death agony against his heart, where,
too, was a little gold.
And the laughing birds in tho old tree,
startled from their sleep by the shot,
laughed once more, wildly and madly,
at Billy's honesty; but there was bitter
ness in their merriment, for their mas
ter, the devil, had been cheated of the
soul of a Black King.-C. Haddon Cham
bers in Oak Bough and Waffle Blossom.