rancis had been rehearsing this speech for several days; but was now
rather surprised that he had the nerve to utter it. But the old man
trusted him. Was not Francis almost a son to him?

If he had been, he could not have inherited the old man's property more
surely. He stayed over night on Fillmore Hill; and when he departed next
morning, he took with him bank books and securities and a letter to
Palmer's banker which made Francis the custodian of all his money. He
even took a small chamois skin bag filled with gold nuggets which the
old man had saved. And he left behind at the house on Fillmore Hill not
a receipt or a paper of any kind that would indicate that Palmer ever
had had any money. They had burned all such tell-tale records; and Henry
Francis felt that he was guilty of something baser than highway robbery.
Yet, if the stock market should take an upward turn, all might be well.

CHAPTER XV

Three Graves by the Middle Yuba

Gaily bedight
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old--
This knight so bold--
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow--
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be--
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied,
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

Edgar Allan Poe.

Robert Palmer's diggings on Fillmore Hill are still plainly seen from
the stage road on the other side of the canon of the Middle Yuba; but he
who has the hardihood to cross the canon will find the mine worked out,
the water-ditch dry, and the old man's house pulled down. The basement
of the house still affords shelter to adventurers who come to dig for
Palmer's hidden treasure. There is no other treasure on that barren
hill-top, for the Woolsey boys, to whom the old man deeded his mine,
worked out the paying gravel long ago.

At the bottom of the canon, and just across the cold, rushing river, is
a clump of rose bushes, which mark the spot where the Woolsey brothers
lived with their mother and old Sherwood, their step-father. Beyond the
rose bushes, in the edge of a meadow, are three lonely graves, covered