and did not calculate what ruin the avarice of gain may bring about in
men.

"When spring came, we set out to seek the gold which should redeem us,
which lay just underground. All that summer we travelled and found
only pay-dirt or colours, and at times not even that, till we came to
the Sleeping River and pitched our camp at what was afterwards
Drunkman's Shallows. How discouraged we were! We talked of turning
back, saying that nothing of worth had ever been found in the Sleeping
River. We called ourselves fools for having wasted our time up there.
Then, on what we had determined should be the last night of our camp,
when we had made up our minds to return next day, Eric Petersen came
by and joined us. He also had found nothing; worse still, had spent
all he had, and, being down in the mouth, got drunk--not decently, but
gloriously intoxicated. Somewhere about midnight, when, after twenty
hours of shining, the sun had disappeared and the world was still
bright as day, and we were all sleeping, he got up and went down to
the river to bathe his aching head, and stumbled on the banks and,
falling in, was nearly drowned. You heard him cry and, waking, ran
down to the water's edge. As you stooped to pull him out, you saw
that, where his foot had stumbled on the bank, it had kicked up a
nugget. Then you roused us and, when we had prospected and found that
gold was really there, we each staked a claim, and you an extra one as
discoverer, and set off that same night on the run to register.

"It was on the evening of the day we recorded that you had your great
time at the Mascot, leading the singing, and being toasted all round.
It seemed to me I had reached El Dorado that night,--and now I know
that I never shall. So, after the fun was over, we went back to work
our claims, and toiled day and night till the river froze up. The
stampede had followed us, and every yard of likely land was staked for
miles below and above. My claim yielded next to nothing, and
Mordaunt's soon pinched out; but your two were the richest on the
Shallows.

"I was soon compelled to work for you for wages. Mordaunt, when he had
taken ten thousand dollars out of his claim, agreed to do likewise.
We should both have left you at that time and gone away to prospect
afresh, had it not been for our early understanding that whatever we
earned was owned conjointly. Just before the winter closed down upon
us, we had taken out nearly fifty thousand dollars,