sang popular
ballads with taste and great acceptability. Another played the violin
with considerable skill, and sometimes indulged in jig tunes, to which
his friends, and occasionally others, danced an accompaniment.

"They'll succeed," was the verdict of Roswell, "for they are strong,
healthy, and will toil like beavers."

"And what of the two men smoking their pipes just beyond the fiddler?"
asked Frank.

"I had a talk with them the other day; one has been a miner in
Australia, and the other spent two years in the diamond mines of
Kimberley, South Africa. Meeting for the first time in San Francisco,
they formed a partnership; they, too, are rugged and must understand
their business."

"No doubt of it. Do you remember that stoop-shouldered old man whose
room is next to ours?"

"The one who has such dreadful coughing spells in the night?"

"Yes; he is far gone with consumption, and yet he won't believe there's
anything the matter with him. He is worse than when he came on board:
but he says it is only a slight cold which will soon pass off, and he
is just as hopeful as you or I of taking a lot of nuggets home with
him."

"He never will see the other side of Chilkoot Pass."

"I doubt whether he will ever see this side."

Thus the boys speculated, sometimes amused and sometimes saddened by
what they saw. There was a big San Francisco policeman, who said he had
cracked heads so long that he thought he knew how to crack some golden
nuggets; a correspondent of a prominent New York newspaper, whose
situation was enviable, since his salary and expenses were guaranteed,
and he was free to gather gold when the opportunity offered; a voluble
insurance agent, who made a nuisance of himself by his solicitations,
in season and out; a massive football-player, who had no companion, and
did not wish any, since he was sure he could buck the line, make a
touchdown, and kick a goal; a gray-haired head of a family, who, having
lost his all, had set out to gather another fortune along the Klondike.
He walked briskly, threw back his shoulders, and tried hard to appear
young and vigorous, but the chances were strongly against him. There
were a number of bright clerks; a clergyman, pleasant and genial with
all; gamblers, with pallid faces and hair and mustaches dyed an intense
black, who expected to win the gold for which others dug; young and
middle-aged men, some with their brave wives, serene and calmly
prepared to bear their f