ired. "Don't you see," he
almost screamed, with passionate vehemence, "it's MASTERS' ABANDONED
TUNNEL your shaft has struck? Not mine! It was Masters' pick you
found! I know it now!"

"And your own tunnel?" said Mulrady, springing to his feet in
excitement. "And YOUR strike?"

"Is still there!"

The next instant, and before another question could be asked, Slinn had
darted from the room. In the exaltation of that supreme discovery he
regained the full control of his mind and body. Mulrady and Don Caesar,
no less excited, followed him precipitately, and with difficulty kept
up with his feverish speed. Their way lay along the base of the hill
below Mulrady's shaft, and on a line with Masters' abandoned tunnel.
Only once he stopped to snatch a pick from the hand of an astonished
Chinaman at work in a ditch, as he still kept on his way, a quarter of
a mile beyond the shaft. Here he stopped before a jagged hole in the
hillside. Bared to the sky and air, the very openness of its
abandonment, its unpropitious position, and distance from the strike in
Mulrady's shaft had no doubt preserved its integrity from wayfarer or
prospector.

"You can't go in there alone, and without a light," said Mulrady,
laying his hand on the arm of the excited man. "Let me get more help
and proper tools."

"I know every step in the dark as in the daylight," returned Slinn,
struggling. "Let me go, while I have yet strength and reason! Stand
aside!"

He broke from them, and the next moment was swallowed up in the yawning
blackness. They waited with bated breath until, after a seeming
eternity of night and silence, they heard his returning footsteps, and
ran forward to meet him. As he was carrying something clasped to his
breast, they supported him to the opening. But at the same moment the
object of his search and his burden, a misshapen wedge of gold and
quartz, dropped with him, and both fell together with equal immobility
to the ground. He had still strength to turn his fading eyes to the
other millionaire of Rough-and-Ready, who leaned over him.

"You--see," he gasped, brokenly, "I was not--crazy!"

No. He was dead!

End of Project Gutenberg's A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready, by Bret Harte

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MILLIONAIRE OF ROUGH-AND-READY ***

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