ished supper until day broke.
Sometimes I was so weary that I would fall asleep as I sat, with a
half-consumed plate of porridge resting on my outstretched legs, and
would wake up at dawn in this position.

The rains were overdue, but at first I did not mind this, because dry
ground is easier to lift than wet, and I was anxious to have my
reservoir completed before the heavy thunderstorms set in. At length
the work was finished, so I set my sluice-box in position below the
vent. Then I spent some days in opening out shallow trenches from the
dam along the sides of the mountains to left and right, so as to catch
the storm water.

But the rain still held off; an occasional thunderstorm would trail
over the ranges, but none came to the saddle. Sometimes it was as
though an invisible hand held them back; I had more than once seen a
rain cloud heading straight for the saddle, only to swerve to right or
left, and pass sometimes within a few hundred yards of it.

I loosened quantities of wash, and harrowed it to the sides of the
trench in which my sluice box lay embedded. I computed, taking the
prospect I had as my basis, that there was upwards of two hundred
pounds' worth of gold in those two heaps.

Having now come literally to the end of my resources, I again started
carrying down stuff to the little spring and there panning it out. But
the spring was failing on account of the drought, and the little
puddled dam hardly collected enough water during the night to admit of
panning. The result of a fortnight's unspeakably hard work was about
four shillings' worth of gold. The trickle of water diminished daily,
until the spring yielded barely enough for my drinking. Then my boots
began to wear out under the strain of clambering up and down the steep,
rocky path. So I plied my barrow barefoot, only using my boots when I
went down to the spring for my daily supply of drinking-water.

Few (excluding, of course, those suffering from actual thirst) have
ever longed for rain as I did. But the sky remained pitiless, and from
my mountain eyry I could see the valley bottoms growing sere and
yellow. Then I suddenly turned against my work; for a few days despair
and I tented together. I lost heart, for that Fate seemed to have
declared against me. During previous seasons I had seen torrents
foaming down the gorge from the saddle; the mountain tops between which
it lay had been the favorite haunts of thunderstorms. It was now late
in