there ain't any there. I've heerd fellers say
you're crazy."

Peter laughed right out.

"Maybe they're right," he said, lighting his pipe.

But Elia shook his head shrewdly.

"You ain't crazy. I'd sure know it. Same as I know when a feller's
bad--like Will Henderson. But say, Peter," he went on persuasively,
"I'd be real glad fer you to tell me 'bout that gold. What you'd do,
an' why? I'm real quick understanding things. It kind o' seems to me
you're good. You don't never scare me like most folks. I can't see
right why----"

"Here, laddie"--Peter leaned his head back on his two locked hands,
and propped himself against the pack saddle--"don't you worry your
head with those things. But I'll tell you something, if you're quick
understanding. Maybe, if other folks heard it--grown folks--they'd
sure say I was crazy. But you're right, I'm not crazy, only--only
maybe tired of things a bit. It's not gold I'm looking for--that is,
in a way. I'm looking for something that all the gold in the world
can't buy."

His tone became reflective. He was talking to the boy, but his
thoughts seemed suddenly to have drifted miles away, lost in a
contemplation of something which belonged to the soul in him alone. He
was like a man who sees a picture in his mind which absorbs his whole
attention, and drifts him into channels of thought which belong to his
solitary moments.

"I'm looking for it day in day out, weeks and years. Sometimes I think
I find it, and then it's gone again. Sometimes I think it don't exist;
then again I'm sure it does. Yes, there've been moments when I know
I've found it, but it gets out of my hand so quick I can't rightly
believe I've ever had it. I go on looking, on and on, and I'll go on
to my dying day, I s'pose. Other folks are doing much the same, I
guess, but they don't know they're doing it, and they're the luckier
for it. What's the use, anyway--and yet, I s'pose, we must all work
out our little share in the scheme of things. Seems to me we've all
got our little 'piece' to say, all got our little bit to do. And we've
just got to go on doing it to the end. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes
it's so mighty easy it sets you wondering. Ah, psha!"

Then he roused out of his mood, and addressed himself more definitely
to the boy.

"You see, laddie, I don't belong to this country. But I stay right
here till I've searched all I know, and so done my 'piece.' Then I'll
up stakes and move on. You see, it's no use