1896.] I called on a maiden last night And suggested a small undertaking; But she wouldn't consider it right— She said I was faking. She called me a flirt, and laughed Like an innocent child awaking; She told funny jokes, and chaffed— While my heart was breaking. Thus gaily the time she whiled Until my leave-taking; Then bade me goodnight, and smiled— Though my heart was breaking. But I saw a bright tear in her eye And she looked so appealing, That I waited a moment, and—why— I think my heart's healing. THE PRIDE OF THE GULCH. Placer Gulch was a small mining village in one of the wildest and most mountainous districts of Northwestern Colorado. It is no longer there, because the disaster which I am about to recount wiped it entirely out of existence. Its inhabitants were, for the greater part, rough, hardy miners, all eager in the search for hidden wealth. But there were a few women in this small village, lost among the multitude of peaks, and among them was one tall, lithe and graceful—a young girl whose pure native beauty might have caused even some of her more polished Eastern sisters to grow pale with envy. Her name was Marion Dudleigh, but she was better known as the " Pride of the Gulch." Yet, although much complimented on her beauty by these coarse miners in their rough but honest way, she was too artless to become vain. Indeed, she seldom seemed to' think of herself at all. Everyone in the little village remembered how, during the preceding Summer, when little Tim Downing was taken ill with diphtheria, it was she who nursed him through sickness back to health, even at the risk of her own life. And for that simple act of kindness she was beloved of all who knew her. On the evening when our story opens she sat at the door of her father's cabin, listlessly watching the setting sun. A moving object approaching her up the hill attracted her attention. The Pride of The Gulch. HEART'S EASE T. N. B
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