of long
years, of wide wilderness, of wandering far over the face of the earth.
The old man had wintered here, summered a thousand miles away, made his
strike at one end of the world, lost it somehow, and cheerfully tried
for a repetition of his luck at the other. I do not believe the
possibility of wealth, though always of course in the background, was
ever near enough his hope to be considered a motive for action. Rather
was it a dream, remote, something to be gained to-morrow, but never
to-day, like the mediaeval Christian's idea of heaven. His interest
was in the search. For that one could see in him a real enthusiasm.
He had his smattering of theory, his very real empirical knowledge, and
his superstitions, like all prospectors. So long as he could keep in
grub, own a little train of burros, and lead the life he loved, he was
happy.

Perhaps one of the chief elements of this remarkable interest in the
game rather than the prizes of it was his desire to vindicate his
guesses or his conclusions. He liked to predict to himself the outcome
of his solitary operations, and then to prove that prediction through
laborious days. His life was a gigantic game of solitaire. In fact,
he mentioned a dozen of his claims many years apart which he had
developed to a certain point,--"so I could see what they was,"--and
then abandoned in favor of fresher discoveries. He cherished the
illusion that these were properties to whose completion some day he
would return. But we knew better; he had carried them to the point
where the result was no longer in doubt and then, like one who has no
interest in playing on in an evidently prescribed order, had laid his
cards on the table to begin a new game.

This man was skilled in his profession; he had pursued it for thirty
odd years; he was frugal and industrious; undoubtedly of his long
series of discoveries a fair percentage were valuable and are
producing-properties to-day. Yet he confessed his bank balance to be
less than five hundred dollars. Why was this? Simply and solely
because he did not care. At heart it was entirely immaterial to him
whether he ever owned a dollar above his expenses. When he sold his
claims, he let them go easily, loath to bother himself with business
details, eager to get away from the fuss and nuisance. The few hundred
dollars he received he probably sunk in unproductive mining work, or
was fleeced out of in the towns. Then joyfully he turned back t