d him, he would lay low 'n' keep dark till the first pan was
washed, 'n' then he would sidle up 'n' take a look, an' if there was
about six or seven grains of gold _he_ was satisfied--he didn't want no
better prospect 'n' that--'n' then he would lay down on our coats and
snore like a steamboat till we'd struck the pocket, an' then get up 'n'
superintend. He was nearly lightnin' on superintending.

"Well, by an' by, up comes this yer quartz excitement. Everybody was
into it--everybody was pick'n' 'n' blast'n' instead of shovelin' dirt on
the hillside--everybody was putt'n' down a shaft instead of scrapin' the
surface. Noth'n' would do Jim, but _we_ must tackle the ledges, too, 'n'
so we did. We commenced putt'n' down a shaft, 'n' Tom Quartz he begin to
wonder what in the Dickens it was all about. _He_ hadn't ever seen any
mining like that before, 'n' he was all upset, as you may say--he
couldn't come to a right understanding of it no way--it was too many for
_him_. He was down on it too, you bet you--he was down on it
powerful--'n' always appeared to consider it the cussedest foolishness
out. But that cat, you know, was _always_ agin new-fangled
arrangements--somehow he never could abide 'em. _You_ know how it is
with old habits. But by an' by Tom Quartz begin to git sort of
reconciled a little, though he never _could_ altogether understand that
eternal sinkin' of a shaft an' never pannin' out anything. At last he
got to comin' down in the shaft, hisself, to try to cipher it out. An'
when he'd git the blues, 'n' feel kind o' scruffy, 'n' aggravated 'n'
disgusted--knowin' as he did, that the bills was runnin' up all the time
an' we warn't makin' a cent--he would curl up on a gunny-sack in the
corner an' go to sleep. Well, one day when the shaft was down about
eight foot, the rock got so hard that we had to put in a blast--the
first blast'n' we'd ever done since Tom Quartz was born. An' then we lit
the fuse 'n' clumb out 'n' got off 'bout fifty yards--'n' forgot 'n'
left Tom Quartz sound asleep on the gunny-sack. In 'bout a minute we
seen a puff of smoke bust up out of the hole, 'n' then everything let go
with an awful crash, 'n' about four million ton of rocks 'n' dirt 'n'
smoke 'n' splinters shot up 'bout a mile an' a half into the air, an' by
George, right in the dead centre of it was old Tom Quartz a-goin' end
over end, an' a-snortin' an' a-sneez'n, an' a-clawin' an' a-reach'n' for
things like all possessed. But it warn