de of me
here--for instance! HE'S made the biggest strike yet, and is puttin'
up a high-toned house on the hill. Well! he'll hev it finished off and
furnished slap-up style, you bet! with a Chinese cook, and a Biddy, and
a Mexican vaquero to look after his horse--but he won't have no mother
to housekeep! That is," he corrected himself perfunctorily, turning to
his companion, "you've never spoke o' your mother, so I reckon you're
about fixed up like us."

The young man thus addressed flushed slightly, and then nodded his head
with a sheepish smile. He had, however, listened to the conversation
with an interest almost childish, and a reverent admiration of his
comrades--qualities which, combined with an intellect not particularly
brilliant, made him alternately the butt and the favorite of the camp.
Indeed, he was supposed to possess that proportion of stupidity
and inexperience which, in mining superstition, gives "luck" to its
possessor. And this had been singularly proven in the fact that he had
made the biggest "strike" of the season.

Joe Wynbrook's sentimentalism, albeit only argumentative and half
serious, had unwittingly touched a chord of simple history, and the
flush which had risen to his cheek was not entirely bashfulness. The
home and relationship of which they spoke so glibly, HE had never
known; he was a foundling! As he lay awake that night he remembered the
charitable institution which had protected his infancy, the master
to whom he had later been apprenticed; that was all he knew of his
childhood. In his simple way he had been greatly impressed by the
strange value placed by his companions upon the family influence, and he
had received their extravagance with perfect credulity. In his absolute
ignorance and his lack of humor he had detected no false quality in
their sentiment. And a vague sense of his responsibility, as one who had
been the luckiest, and who was building the first "house" in the camp,
troubled him. He lay staringly wide awake, hearing the mountain wind,
and feeling warm puffs of it on his face through the crevices of the log
cabin, as he thought of the new house on the hill that was to be
lathed and plastered and clapboarded, and yet void and vacant of that
mysterious "mother"! And then, out of the solitude and darkness, a
tremendous idea struck him that made him sit up in his bunk!

A day or two later "Prossy" Riggs stood on a sand-blown, wind-swept
suburb of San Francisco, before a