the vital principle of forty thousand tom-cat
fights--a screech that left a sediment in the ear-drums of the listeners
for the balance of the morning--he fairly flew up the straight side of
the cliff, followed by a rain of projectiles.

"Ches, we oughtn't to have done that," said Jim soberly. "If that fellow
had been of another mind, he'd have made this the warmest day of our
lives."

"W'y! Will dey fight?" asked Ches, his eyes wide open.

"They will that, son, sometimes," replied Jim. Then he launched into the
tales of wild beast hunts, drifted from that to the romance of the gold
field, the riches coming in a day--the whole glamour of it.

Never did narrator have more attentive listener. There was a sort of
white joy in the boy's face.

"Oh, ain't I glad to git in dis!" he cried. "Here's just wot I been
lookin' fur." Suddenly he struck Jim on the shoulder with a tightly
clenched fist. "I made fur youse der first t'ing--didn't yer see me? I
know me man all right. Der secont I put me peeps on yer I ses ter meself,
'Dat feller won't t'row yer down, Chimmy'--ain't I right, hey? Ain't I
right, Mister?"

Jim patted him on the back. "I think you're right, old man," he said.
"I'll do anything I can for you."

"Yer don't hafter tell me dat--I know it," replied the boy. A sudden sob
gathered in his throat and choked him. "Yer don't know wot I been
t'rough, Mister--it 'ud laid out many er big stiff ten times me size.
I'd--don't youse laugh at me now, becus I'm only a kid--I'd give me
heart's blood fur youse, s' help me, I would, now!"

"Shake hands, pardner," said Jim, his own voice a trifle hoarse. "We'll
do fine together--I know we will."

III

They crested the last sharp rise, and looked down upon the little cabin
huddling in the spruces--an island of humanity in the beautiful sea of
the wilderness.

It seemed to Jim as if the small house brightened in appearance at the
return of its soul; his heart in turn rose with a home feeling; his
belief in the treasure which lay where the new channel cut across the old
wash--that treasure which would make the world so different--came back to
him like a renewed love. His hands ached for a grip on pick and shovel.
His strong muscles twitched with eagerness to be at work again.

Suddenly a ponderous and gross sound, out of all proportion to the size
of its source, smashed the mountain silence into slivers. It was the
burro's greeting to his companions, and the echo