r the
nonce.

Joel stared at the speaker, with his lower jaw dropping.

"What can I do for'ee, friend?" asked the hump-back; peering at the
grimy, half-naked miner, with his little ferrety eyes glowing
luminously.

Joel moistened his lips with his tongue before he answered. "Nawthin',
plaise, sir," he gasped out, quakingly.

"Nonsense, my man!" said the hump-back pleasantly, rubbing his hands
cheerfully together as he spoke. And Joel noticed that the fingers,
though long and skinny--almost wrinkled and lean enough, in fact, to
pass for claws--were adorned with several sparkling rings. "Nonsense, my
man! I'm your friend--if you'll let me be. O never mind my hump, if it's
that that's frightening you, I got that through a fall a long while
ago," and the lean brown face puckered into a smile. "Come! In what way
can I oblige'ee, friend? I can grant you any wish you like. Say the
word--and it's done! Just think what you could do if you had heaps of
money, now--piles of suvrins in that owld chest in your bedroom,
instead o' they paltry two-an'-twenty suvrins which you now got heeded
away in the skibbet."

Joel stared at the speaker with distended eyes: the great beads of
perspiration gathering on his forehead.

"How ded'ee come to knaw they was there?" he asked.

"I knaw more than that," said the hump-back, laughing. "I could tell'ee
a thing or two, b'leeve, if I wanted to. I knaw tin,[A] cumraade, as
well as the next." And with that he began to chuckle to himself.

"Wedn'ee like they two-an'-twenty suvrins in the skibbet made a
hunderd-an'-twenty?" asked the hump-back insinuatingly.

"Iss, by Gosh, I should!" said Joel.

"Then gi'me your haand on it, cumraade; an' you shall have 'em!"

"Here goes, then!" said Joel, thrusting out his hand.

The hump-back seized the proffered hand in an instant, covering the
grimy fingers with his own lean claws.

"Oh, le'go! _le'go!_" shouted Joel.

The hump-back grinned; his black eyes glittering.

"I waan't be niggardly to'ee, cumraade," said he. "Every drop o' blood
you choose to shed for the purpose shall turn into a golden suvrin
for'ee--there!"

"Darn'ee! thee ben an' run thy nails in me--see!"

And Joel shewed a drop of blood oozing from his wrist.

"Try the charm, man! Wish! Hold un out, an' say, _Wan_!"

Joel held out his punctured wrist mechanically.

"Wan!"

There was a sudden gleam--and down dropped a sovereign: a bright gold
coin that rang sharply as it