The men had come forward to surround the anvil, with the tiny little
chap upon its massive top, and not one in all the groups was there who
did not feel that, left alone with the timid bit of a pilgrim, he could
get him to talking and laughing in the briefest of moments.

The hymns with which old Jim had promised the meeting should conclude
were all but forgotten. Two or three miners, whose hunger for song was
not to be readily appeased, kept bringing the subject to the fore
again, however, till at length they were heard.

"We're scarin' little Skeezucks, anyhow," said the brawny smith, once
more reviving the fire in the forge.

"Let's sing 'In the Sweet By-and-By,' if all of us know it," suggested
a young fellow scarcely more than a lad. "It's awful easy."

"Wal, you start her bilin'," replied the teamster.

The young fellow blushed, but he nerved himself to the point and sang
out, nervously at first, and then, when his confidence increased, in a
clear, ringing tenor of remarkable purity, recalling the old-time words
that once were so widely known and treasured:

"'There's a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar,
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling-place there.'"

Then the chorus of voices, husky from neglect and crude from lack of
culture, joined in the chorus, with a heartiness that shook the dingy