swered me in a peculiar Yankee drawl: 'I guess, stranger, as I
ain't the one to make a man quarrel with his food, more especial when
there ain't no more going of the rounds; and as for that there claim,
well, she's been a good nigger to me; but between you and me, stranger,
speaking man to man, now that there ain't any filthy lucre between us to
obscure the features of the truth, I guess she's about worked out!'

"I gasped; the fellow's effrontery took the breath out of me. Only five
minutes before he had been swearing by all his gods--and they appeared
to be numerous and mixed--that there were half a dozen fortunes left in
the claim, and that he was only giving it up because he was downright
weary of shovelling the gold out.

"'Don't look so vexed, stranger,' went on my tormentor, 'perhaps there
is some shine in the old girl yet; anyway you are a downright good
fellow, you are, therefore you will, I guess, have a real A1 opportunity
of working on the feelings of Fortune. Anyway it will bring the muscle
up upon your arm, for the stuff is uncommon stiff, and, what is more,
you will in the course of a year earn a sight more than two thousand
dollars in value of experience.'

"Then he went just in time, for in another moment I should have gone for
him, and I saw his face no more.

"Well, I set to work on the old claim with my boy Harry and half a dozen
Kaffirs to help me, which, seeing that I had put nearly all my worldly
wealth into it, was the least that I could do. And we worked, my word,
we did work--early and late we went at it--but never a bit of gold did
we see; no, not even a nugget large enough to make a scarf-pin out of.
The American gentleman had secured it all and left us the sweepings.

"For three months this went on, till at last I had paid away all, or
very near all, that was left of her little capital in wages and food for
the Kaffirs and ourselves. When I tell you that Boer meal was sometimes
as high as four pounds a bag, you will understand that it did not take
long to run through our banking account.

"At last the crisis came. One Saturday night I had paid the men as
usual, and bought a muid of mealie meal at sixty shillings for them to
fill themselves with, and then I went with my boy Harry and sat on the
edge of the great hole that we had dug in the hill-side, and which we
had in bitter mockery named Eldorado. There we sat in the moonlight
with our feet over the edge of the claim, and were melanch