hat Allen had to say. He was watching Old Ben and his friend as they sat
by the fire, chatting and smoking, the very picture of contentment. Now
and then a little of their conversation would reach him, but he could not
make head nor tail of it. At the supper table the man with the crutch had
eyed Willis many times. In his manner there was something that seemed to
be so very familiar, yet his face, which was covered with a several
weeks' beard, was strange to Willis.

"I never saw a face so like my old pard's," the stranger was saying to
Ben. "And you know, Ben, I often wonder if some day I won't hear
something from Bill's family. There was a wee boy, but what others, if
any, I don't know. The day of the wreck I saw a lad that did a brave
deed, and ever since I've been wondering if he might be Bill's boy--he
looked so like him."

"Tad, what became of that tarnal critter, Williams, that ye told me
about? The feller that jumped that placer claim up'n the gulch--do you
ever see him any more?"

"Yes, Ben, he is still in the city. Has a mighty sick wife--tuberculosis,
they say. He's crookeder than a cork-screw, they tell me; but he'll get
caught yet, that kind always does. You know his wife is a sister to
Bill's wife. If it hadn't been for that relationship to Bill, I'd have
had it out with him long ago. But what's the use, anyway. The mine's no
good and the ground's no good, and I haven't any money to fight him."

"Yep, but s'posin' the tunnel was good; what then?"

"I don't know, Ben. Old Williams has a good name, generally speaking, in
the city, and he has money--I couldn't fight him. Dad Wright used to say
he was a 'snake in the grass,' and Dad doesn't often misjudge a man."

"Who holds the key to that tarnal hole, anyway, Tad?"

"Williams was the last man in the tunnel, Ben, and I suppose he holds the
keys. I've never been inside since I carried out poor Bill's broken
body."

"Well, Tad, I was a pesterin' around there not long ago, an' I seed whar
some tarnal critter hed tried to pry the lock off. You know, Tad, I
b'lieve they is pay rock in that gulch, if the likes o' you an' me could
jist light onto it. Ye can pan color anywhere around the shanty, if ye
know how. I picked up some o' that quartz formation by the dump, an' drat
it, Tad, it's fine lookin' stuff."

"Yes, Ben, I often think I'll go back and work a little longer on the old
hole. Bill was certain we had struck it--talked in his fever before he
died.