the open sunlight and open trail.
They were already far away; their guilty personal secret would keep
them from revisiting it. An immense feeling of relief came over the
soul of this moral romancer; a momentary recognition of the Most High
in this perfect poetical retribution. He ran back quickly to his
saddle-bags, drew out one or two carefully written, formal notices of
preemption and claim, which he and his former companions had carried in
their brief partnership, erased their signatures and left only his own
name, with another grateful sense of Divine interference, as he thought
of them speeding far away in the distance, and returned to the ruins.
With unconscious irony, he selected a charred post from the embers,
stuck it in the ground a few feet from the debris of outcrop, and
finally affixed his "Notice." Then, with a conscientiousness born
possibly of his new religious convictions, he dislodged with his
pickaxe enough of the brittle outcrop to constitute that presumption of
"actual work" upon the claim which was legally required for its
maintenance, and returned to his horse. In replacing his things in his
saddle-bags he came upon the slipper, and for an instant so complete
was his preoccupation in his later discovery, that he was about to
throw it away as useless impedimenta, until it occurred to him, albeit
vaguely, that it might be of service to him in its connection with that
discovery, in the way of refuting possible false claimants. He was not
aware of any faithlessness to his momentary romance, any more than he
was conscious of any disloyalty to his old companions, in his
gratification that his good fortune had come to him alone. This
singular selection was a common experience of prospecting. And there
was something about the magnitude of his discovery that seemed to point
to an individual achievement. He had made a rough calculation of the
richness of the lode from the quantity of precipitate in his rude
experiment; he had estimated its length, breadth, and thickness from
his slight knowledge of geology and the theories then ripe; and the
yield would be colossal! Of course, he would require capital to work
it, he would have to "let in" others to his scheme and his prosperity;
but the control of it would always be HIS OWN.

Then he suddenly started as he had never in his life before started at
the foot of man! For there was a footfall in the charred brush; and
not twenty yards from him stood Colli