worst with me they were soonest to turn to the best, so I dug away. My
tunnel went into the hill on a slight upraise, and I could do the work
alone. You see I had so little money I didn't want to waste a cent.

"But it all went at last for powder and the sharpening of picks, and
for assaying--till one morning in August I found myself without money
and without food."

He paused there, and his face grew dark with remembered despair, and
she shuddered.

"It must be terrible to be without food and money."

"No one knows what it means till he experiences it. I worked all day
without food. It seemed as if I must strike it then. Besides, I took a
sort of morbid pleasure in abusing myself--as if I were to blame. I
had been living on canned beans, and flapjacks, and coffee without
milk or sugar, and I was weak and sick--but it all had to end. About
four o'clock I dropped my pick and staggered out to the light. It was
impossible to do anything more."

There were tears in her eyes now, for his voice unconsciously took on
the anguish of that despair.

"I sat there looking out toward the mountains and down on the camp.
The blasts were booming from all hills--the men were going home with
their dinner-pails flashing red in the setting sun's light. It was
terrible to think of them going home to supper. It seemed impossible
that I should be sitting there starving, and the grass so green, the
sunset so beautiful. I can see it all now as it looked then, the old
Sangre de Christo range! It was like a wall of glistening marble that
night.

"Well, I sat there till my hunger gnawed me into action. Then I
staggered down the trail. I saw how foolish I had been to go on day
after day hoping, hoping until the last cent was gone. I hadn't money
enough to pay the extra postage on a letter which was at the office.
The clerk gave me the letter and paid the shortage himself. The letter
was from my sister, telling me how peaceful and plentiful life was at
home, and it made me crazy. She asked me how many nuggets I had found.
You can judge how that hurt me. I reeled down the street, for I must
eat or die, I knew that."

"Oh, how horrible!" the girl said softly.

"There was one eating-house at which I always took my supper. It was
kept by an Irish woman, a big, hearty woman whose husband was a
prospector--or had been. 'Biddy Kelly's' was famous for its 'home
cooking.' I went by the door twice, for I couldn't bring myself to go
in and ask for