ot that has since
been named Higgins' Camp, for there it was rumored that gold was to be
found in plenty, and missed it. I came here, and here I stayed."

Now the big man rose to his feet, and looked down on the younger one.
He looked kindly. Then, as if seized and shaken by a torrent of
impulses which he was trying to hold in check, he spoke tremulously
and in suppressed tones.

"I longed for my son, but I tell you this, because there is a strange
thing which grasps a man's soul when he finds gold--as I found it. I
came to love it for its own sake. I lived here and stored it up--until
I am rich--you may not find many men so rich. I could go back and buy
that bank that was Peter Craigmile's pride--" His voice rose, but he
again suppressed it. "I could buy that pitiful little bank a hundred
times over. And she--is--gone. I tried to keep her and the remembrance
of her in my mind above the gold, but it was like a lunacy upon me. At
the last--until I found you there on the verge of death--the gold was
always first in my mind, and the triumph of having it. I came to
glory in it, and I worked day after day, and often in the night by
torches, and all I gathered I hid, and when I was too weary to work, I
sat and handled it and felt it fall through my fingers.

"A woman in England--Miss Evans, by name, only she writes under the
name of a man, George Eliot--has written a tale of a poor weaver who
came to love his little horde of gold as if it were alive and human.
It's a strong tale, that. A good one. Well, I came to understand what
the poor little weaver felt. Summer and winter, day and night, week
days and Sundays--and I was brought up to keep the Sunday like a
Christian should--all were the same to me, just one long period for
the getting together of gold. After a time I even forgot what I wanted
the gold for in the first place, and thought only of getting it, more
and more and more.

"This is a confession, lad. I tremble to think what would have been on
my soul had I done what I first thought of doing when that horse of
yours called me. He was calling for you--no doubt, but the call came
from heaven itself for me, and the temptation came. It was, to stay
where I was and know nothing. I might have done that, too, if it were
not for the selfish reasons that flashed through my mind, even as the
temptation seized it. It was that there might be those below who were
climbing to my home--to find me out and take from me my gold.