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 Athelwold, [drama].
 Barbara Dering, [sequel to The Quick or the Dead?]
 Nurse Crumpet Tells the Story.
 Story of Arnon.
 Inja.
 Witness of the Sun.
 Herod and Mariamne, [drama].
 Poems, [scattered in magazines].
 Tanis, the Sang-Digger.

TANIS.

(_From Tanis, the Sang-Digger._[49])

Gilman was driving along one of the well-kept turnpikes that wind
about the Warm Springs Valley. He recognized the austere and solemn
beauty that hemmed him in from the far-off outer world; but at the
same time he was contrasting it with the sea-coast of his native
State, Massachusetts, and a certain creeping homesickness began to
rise about his heart.

[Illustration: ~Model School, Peabody Normal College.~]

In addition to this, he had left his delicate wife suffering with an
acute neuralgic headache, and also saddened by a yearning for the
picturesque old farm-house in which he had been born, and where they
had lived during the first year of marriage. The trap which Gilman
drove was filled with surveying instruments, and, as he turned into
the rough mountain road, which led towards the site of the new railway
for which he was now prospecting, the smaller ones began to rattle
together and slide from the seat beside him. Finally, as the cart
slipped against a stone, the level bounced into a puddle. He was about
to jump out when a bold, ringing voice called to him:

"Set still--A'll pick hit up."

Then a figure slid down the rocky bank at his right, her one garment
wrinkling from her bare, sturdy legs during the performance.

Gilman had never seen anything like her in his thirty years of varied
experience.

She was very tall. A curtain of rough, glittering curls hung to her
knees. Her face, clear with that clearness which only a mountain wind
can bring, was white as a seagull's breast, except where a dark, yet
vivid pink melted into the blue veins on her temples and throat. Her
round, fresh lips, smooth as a peony-leaf, were parted in a wide
laugh, over teeth large and yellow-white, like the grains on an ear of
corn. She wore a loose tunic of blue-gray stuff, which reached to the
middle of her legs, covered with grass stains and patches of mould.
Her bare feet, somewhat broadened by walking, were well-shaped, the
great toe standing apart from the others, the strong, round ankles,
although scratched and bruised, perfectly symmetrical. Her arms, bare
almost to the shoulder, were like those with which in imagination we
complete the Milo. Eyes, round and colored like the edges of broken
glass, looked out boldly from under her long black eyebrows. Her nose
was straight and well cut, but set impertinently.

As she picked up the muddy level she laughed boisterously and wiped it
on her frock.

"Thank you," said Gilman, and then, after a second's hesitation,
added: "Where are you going? Perhaps I can give you a lift on your
way? Will you get in?"

"Well, a done keer ef a do," she said, still staring at him.

She got in and took the level on her knee, then burst out laughing
again--

"A reckon yuh wonders what a'm a haw-hawin' at?" she asked, suddenly.
"Well, a'll tell yuh! 'Tiz case a feels jess like this hyuh
contrapshun o' yourn. A haint hed a bite sence five this mawnin', and
a've got a bubble in th' middle o' me, a ken tell yuh!"

She opened her flexible mouth almost to her ears, showing both rows of
speckless teeth, and roaring mirthfully again.

"I've got some sandwiches, here--won't you have one?" said Gilman.

"Dunno--what be they?" she asked, rather suspiciously, eyeing him
sidewise.

He explained to her, and she accepted one, tearing from it a huge
semi-circle, which she held in her cheek while exclaiming:

"Murder! hain't that good, though? D'yuh eat them things ev'y day? Yuh
looks hit! You're a real fine-lookin' feller--mos' ez good-lookin' ez
Bill."

"Who is Bill?" asked Gilman, much interested in this, his first
conversation with a genuine savage.

"Bill? he's muh pard, an' muh brother, too. I come down hyuh tuh git
him a drink o' water, but a hain't foun' a spring yit."

"No, there isn't one in several miles," said Gilman.

"Hyuh!" she cried. "Lemme git out." . . . And she was out, with the
bound of a deer. "You g'long," she said; "a'm sorry a rode this far
wi' you. You'll larf 'bout muh bar foots, an' this hyuh rag o' mine,
wi' them po' white trash an' niggers. Whar you fum, anyhow? You hain't
a Fuginia feller. A kin tell by yo' talk. You called roots 'ruts'
jess now, an' yuh said we'd 'sun' be whar them other fellers be. Whar
you fum?"

"From Massachusetts," said Gilman.

"S'that another langidge fuh some name a knows?"

"No--it's the real name of another State."

"Well, hit's 'nuff tuh twis' a body's tongue, fuh life, so a done
blame yuh s'much fuh yo' funny talk. Mawnin'." And she began to swing
herself upon a great lichen-crested boulder by the roadside. . . . . .

Gilman was naturally curious as to the type of the young barbarian
whom he had met on his drive to Black Creek, and, during a pause in
his work, he told a young fellow named Watkins of his adventure, and
asked him to what class the girl belonged.

"I reckon, sir, she was a sang-digger," said Watkins, laughing.
"They're a awful wild lot, mostly bad as they make 'em, with no more
idea of right an' wrong than a lot o' ground-horgs."

"But what is a 'sang-digger'?" asked Gilman, more and more curious.

"Well, sir, sang, or ginseng, ez the real name is, is a sorter root
that grows thick in the mountains about here. They make some sorter
medicine outer it. I've chawed it myself for heartburn. It's right
paying, too--sang-digging is, sir; you ken git at least a dollar a
pound for it, an' sometimes you ken dig ten pounds in a day, but
that's right seldom. Two or three pounds a day is doin' well. They're
a awful low set, sir, sang-diggers is. We call 'em 'snakes'
hereabouts, 'cause they don't have no place to live cep'in' in winter,
and then they go off somewhere or ruther, to their huts. But in the
summer and early autumn they stop where night ketches 'em, an' light a
fire an' sleep 'round it. They cert'n'y are a bad lot, sir. They'll
steal a sheep or a horse ez quick ez winkin'. Why, t'want a year ago
that they stole a mighty pretty mare o' mine, that I set a heap by,
an' rid off her tail an' mane a-tearin' through the brush with her.
She got loose somehow an' come back to me. But they stole two horses
for ole Mr. Hawkins, down near Fallin' Springs, an' he a'in't been
able to git 'em back. There's awful murders an' villainies done by
'em. But some o' them sang-digger gals is awful pretty. . . . Yes,
sir, I reckon she was a sang-digger, sure enough."

[This wild creature of the woods was treated kindly by Gilman and his
wife, and she finally sacrificed herself to save Mrs. Gilman.]

FOOTNOTE:

[49] By permission of the author, and publishers, the Town Topics
Publishing Co., N. Y.

GRACE KING.

GRACE KING was born in New Orleans, the daughter of William W. King,
and has made a reputation as a writer of short stories depictin

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