, happy three months that he lingered there, but did not
make his fortune; he only laid the corner-stone.

They tried their fortune at Angel's Camp, a place well known to readers
of Bret Harte. But it rained pretty steadily, and they put in most
of their time huddled around the single stove of the dingy hotel of
Angel's, telling yarns. Among the stories was one told by a dreary
narrator named Ben Coon. It was about a frog that had been trained to
jump, but failed to win a wager because the owner of a rival frog had
surreptitiously loaded him with shot. The story had been circulated
among the camps, but Mark Twain had never heard it until then. The tale
and the tiresome fashion of its telling amused him. He made notes to
remember it.

Their stay in Angel's Camp came presently to an end. One day, when the
mining partners were following the specks of gold that led to a pocket
somewhere up the hill, a chill, dreary rain set in. Jim, as usual was
washing, and Clemens was carrying water. The "color" became better and
better as they ascended, and Gillis, possessed with the mining passion,
would have gone on, regardless of the rain. Clemens, however, protested,
and declared that each pail of water was his last. Finally he said, in
his deliberate drawl:

"Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work is too disagreeable. Let's
go to the house and wait till it clears up."

Gillis had just taken out a pan of earth. "Bring one more pail, Sam," he
pleaded.

"I won't do it, Jim! Not a drop! Not if I knew there was a million
dollars in that pan!"

They left the pan standing there and went back to Angel's Camp. The rain
continued and they returned to jackass Hill without visiting their claim
again. Meantime the rain had washed away the top of the pan of earth
left standing on the slope above Angel's, and exposed a handful of
nuggets-pure gold. Two strangers came along and, observing it, had sat
down to wait until the thirty-day claim-notice posted by Jim Gillis
should expire. They did not mind the rain--not with that gold in
sight--and the minute the thirty days were up they followed the lead a
few pans further, and took out-some say ten, some say twenty, thousand
dollars. It was a good pocket. Mark Twain missed it by one pail of
water. Still, it is just as well, perhaps, when one remembers The
Jumping Frog.

Matters having quieted down in San Francisco, he returned and took up
his work again. Artemus Ward, whom he had met in V