rindled ox lay down; but then he did not reflect upon the need of
marking the place, but ran home, in his impatience to communicate the
delightful information he had received, and on his return found that
the brindled ox had risen and left the place; and as he could not
determine the spot, the gold still awaits the search of some more
reflective and painstaking person. Of course, one and another of the
narrator's auditors thought himself such a person, and hied him away
to the conical hill that rises so conspicuously at the entrance to the
estuary of the Forth. What success attended them there we have not the
means of knowing, but we have seen it stated in a local newspaper,
that a specimen of the shining substance found in that place had been
sent to the editor, and he pronounces it more like gold than the
crystals brought him from the Lomond Hills. But 'like,' says the
proverb, 'is an ill mark;' and we hope the gold-diggers of Fife will
consider themselves as having been already sufficiently deceived by
appearances.

The mania lasted fully three weeks, not that any one person was under
its influence all that time--for, singularly enough, the man who had
been once there rarely if ever returned--but, like an epidemic, it
spread wide, and only ceased by a change in the intellectual
atmosphere. There could not be less than 300 persons upon an average
each day upon the hill, either searching for the supposed treasure, or
waiting to ascertain the result from those that did. This would make
an aggregate of 6300 in the whole time; but let us keep much within
the mark, and take the number convened during that period at 5000.
Many of these were men earning 15s. a week; but let us put them all
down at 1s. 6d per day each, and allow 1s. for the expense incurred in
their going to and from the place. This will make half-a-crown lost
and expended by every one of them. This calculation makes L.30 a day,
and L.630 for the whole period. Now, we are fully persuaded, that
though all the pyrites carried off had been gold in the proportion in
which it seemed in the substance, it would not have realised this sum,
which is about the price of 200 ounces of gold; so that, in the
aggregate, the diggers would have been losers, though some of them
individually might have been gainers. But the gainers would have been
few in proportion to the whole, for we observed that not more than one
man in twenty found even the pyrites, which are probably stil