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 offering flowers instead of household and kitchen provisions. Even a stone god ought to appreciate a little sentiment like that on top of the fancy groceries they had piled up in front of him.

“And then High Jack steps down from his pedestal, quiet, and mentions a few words that sounded just like the hieroglyphics carved on the walls of the ruin. The girl gives a little jump backward, and her eyes fly open as big as doughnuts; but she don’t beat it.

“Why didn’t she? I’ll tell you why I think why. It don’t seem to a girl so supernatural, unlikely, strange, and startling that a stone god should come to life for her. If he was to do it for one of them snub-nosed brown girls on the other side of the woods, now, it would be different—but her! I’ll bet she said to herself: ‘Well, goodness me! you’ve been a long time getting on your job. I’ve half a mind not to speak to you.’

“But she and High Jack holds hands and walks away out of the temple together. By the time I’d had time to take another drink and enter upon the scene they was twenty yards away, going up the path in the woods that the girl had come down. With the natural scenery Rh