n they weren't there," Clem
answered. "How was I to tell what was real and what was dream?

"On one side was Jim telling about his gold mine, on the other was
Anton, crying out from time to time that the knockers had him. Poor
kid, he seemed to be in a nightmare all the while."

"But when the rescuers first spoke to you," the owner of the mine
suggested, "you answered naturally enough."

"Perhaps I did, but I don't remember hearing them, at all, and I don't
remember answering, at least, not more than I had a dozen times
before. I'm not sure that I remember when the doctor came in and put a
gas mask on me. It's all sort of vague.

"The first thing I do remember was coming up to the top and seeing a
green tree. The trees weren't green when I went down a week ago, and I
hadn't dreamed about trees, at all.

"Right now, it's hard to realize that I was buried down there for a
week. If I wasn't so feeble, I'd think it was only a nightmare."

"And about this gold mine of Jim's," queried the reporter, scenting
another phase of the story. "What was that?"

Jim, in a neighboring bed, half-raised himself in anxiety, but his
comrade threw him a reassuring look.

"You'll have to ask Jim that, when he gets better," Clem answered. "I
can't give away his secret. It might be true!"

CHAPTER V

THE LURE OF GOLD

In Clem's story one word had been spoken, the one word which, in all
ages, has been as a raging fire in men's minds, which has sent scores
to die on the scorching deserts of Africa and Australia, or on the
borders of the Arctic Seas, which has bred fevered adventure,
lawlessness, and murder wherever it has been spoken, the word:

Gold!

Many years had passed since Owens had felt this auriferous fever, many
years since his heart had beat impetuously as in the wild days of the
camps of his youth, but the word had rung again in his ears as of old.
The subtle poison of the lure was in his veins once more. He could not
sleep for thinking of the old prospector lying almost at the point of
death in his own mine hospital, and, perhaps, dying with the secret of
millions, untold.

He reasoned with himself for his foolishness. Over and over again he
reminded himself that he was settled for life as a colliery-owner, and
that coal mines bring far more wealth than gold mines have ever done.
The spell was stronger than his reason. Night after night he sat late
in his library, reading anew the lore of gold that he had on