n, he pretended to lose his balance, and,
shooting out his foot as if to save himself, sent the yellow lump
flying from the half-breed's palm. It shot into the air, fell with a
thud, and rolled scintillating into the darkness across the boarded
floor. Before he could be detained, Granger had sprung after it and
held it in his hand. He faced round, ready to defend himself; but
there was no necessity. Eyelids, having attempted to rise and having
found that his legs would not carry him, had sunk back to his
squatting position on the floor, where he was smiling foolishly and
nodding his head as much as to say, "I've been telling you all
evening, but you would not believe me; now I have proved my word!"

Beorn was sitting upright on his shelf, looking at him keenly. As
Granger approached, he held out his hand; Granger placed the yellow
lump in it.

"Gold," he cried, and his eyes flashed; "a river nugget!" Then
weighing it carefully, "Three ounces," he said; "it's worth about
forty dollars."

"How do you know that?" asked Granger. "Was it river gold that you
found on the Comstock? I thought that it was quartz."

"It was quartz afterwards, but nuggets and dust first." Then,
remembering himself, he asked suspiciously, "But what d'you know about
it?"

"I ought to know something," Granger replied, speaking thickly and
shamming intoxication; "I ought to know something; I was one of the
first men in on the Klondike gold-rush."

"Damn it! So you were one of the Klondike men? Tell me about it."

Granger had intended to spin him a yarn about great bonanzas in Yukon,
which he had discovered. It was to have been a hard-luck tale of
claims which had been stolen, and claims which had been jumped, and
claims which had been given away for a few pounds of flour or slices
of bacon in crises of starvation; but in the presence of the old man's
eagerness, and with the shining nugget of temptation between them, he
drifted unconsciously into straight talk and told him his own true
story.

At first, while he was feeling his way, he gave the history of Bobbie
Henderson, and Siwash George, and Skookum Jim, the real discoverers of
the Klondike; and of how Bobbie Henderson was done out of his share,
so that he still remained a poor man and prospector when others, who
had come into the Yukon years later, had worked their claims, grown
wealthy, and departed. Then he recited the Iliad of the stampede from
Forty-Mile, when the rumour had spread