on
each side with two powerful thumbs. After a moment's contemplative
survey of the floor between him and the speaker, he raised his eyes to
Slinn. They were small and colorless; the forehead above them was low,
and crowned with a shock of tawny reddish hair; even the rude strength
of his lower features was enfeebled by a long, straggling, goat-like
beard; but for the first time in his life the whole face was impressed
and transformed with a strong and simple dignity.

"Ez far ez I kin see, Slinn," he said, gravely, "the pint between you
and me ain't to be settled by our children, or wot we allow is doo and
right from them to us. Afore we preach at them for playing in the
slumgullion, and gettin' themselves splashed, perhaps we mout ez well
remember that that thar slumgullion comes from our own sluice-boxes,
where we wash our gold. So we'll just put THEM behind us, so," he
continued, with a backward sweep of his powerful hand towards the
chimney, "and goes on. The next thing that crops up ahead of us is
your three years in the hospital, and wot you went through at that
time. I ain't sayin' it wasn't rough on you, and that you didn't have
it about as big as it's made; but ez you'll allow that you'd hev had
that for three years, whether I'd found your mine or whether I hadn't,
I think we can put THAT behind us, too. There's nothin' now left to
prospect but your story of your strike. Well, take your own proofs.
Masters is not here; and if he was, accordin' to your own story, he
knows nothin' of your strike that day, and could only prove you were a
disappointed prospector in a tunnel; your letter--that the person you
wrote to never got--YOU can't produce; and if you did, would be only
your own story without proof! There is not a business man ez would
look at your claim; there isn't a friend of yours that wouldn't believe
you were crazy, and dreamed it all; there isn't a rival of yours ez
wouldn't say ez you'd invented it. Slinn, I'm a business man--I am
your friend--I am your rival--but I don't think you're lyin'--I don't
think you're crazy--and I'm not sure your claim ain't a good one!

"Ef you reckon from that that I'm goin' to hand you over the mine
to-morrow," he went on, after a pause, raising his hand with a
deprecating gesture, "you're mistaken. For your own sake, and the sake
of my wife and children, you've got to prove it more clearly than you
hev; but I promise you that from this night forward I will