ssenger was at
once sent out again, this time to the office of the company. He found the
secretary, who referred him to the ---- Bank, from which the dividends
were to be paid. There he found stock for sale, but the price demanded
was L6 per share.

He returned home and made his report. The three men gazed at each other
with blank looks of despair.

"Thirty thousand shares at L6 will take all we have," said Hamlin.

"And I shorted 10,000 shares besides," said Jenvie.

"So did I," said Hamlin.

"So did I," said Stetson.

"It seems clear enough that we are absolutely ruined," said Hamlin.

"I wonder what has become of that Portuguese, Emanuel," said Hamlin.

At that moment he entered the office. He looked like the picture of
despair. He broke out with: "It is awful! I have just heard ze truth. It
was that American who did it. When you thought last year that he had gone
to America, he, with another American, had gone to Africa.

"They found ze mine. They found a way out from it by going in the
opposite direction from which they came. Sedgwick went by Australia
to San Francisco, and ordered a forty-stamp mill. The other American
remained, and opened the mine by a tunnel. Sedgwick came back this way,
and, left here to meet the mill at Port Natal.

"It has been running three months. Two months' proceeds are here, and pay
dividends of four shillings, and it is good for two shillings per month
for years; with machinery doubled, good for four shillings per month for
years to come. The stock has gone to L6; it will go to L10 so soon as it
is well understood. And I lost it all, because I had not the sense to
find that way out from ze mine. The road by the trail would have cost
L75,000 or L100,000, and I believed only impassable mountains were to ze
west."

"How did you find all this out?" asked Jenvie.

"From ze Secretary, McGregor. He was master of ze ship that carried the
machinery from San Francisco, and he brought ze Americans from Port
Natal. One was very sick with the fever, and came near dying. He had,
besides, one wound which he received with ze Boers coming out to the
coast from the mine. They are two devils. Ten or a dozen Boers attacked
them to get the first month's bullion, and they two killed five of them,
and drove ze rest away."

"I wish the Boers had killed them both," said Jenvie.

"They are hard men to kill," said Emanuel. "McGregor says, when ashore
one day at D'Umber, there was a chicken-shooti