sper,
"'You want capital, Johnson,' sez I, 'to develop your resources, and
you want a pardner. Capital you can send for, but your pardner,
Johnson,--your pardner is right yer. And his name, it is Tommy
Islington.' Them's the very words I used."

He stopped and chafed his clammy hands upon his knees. "It's six months
ago sens I made you my pardner. Thar ain't a lick I've struck sens
then, Tommy, thar ain't a han'ful o' yearth I've washed, thar ain't
a shovelful o' rock I've turned over, but I tho't o' you. 'Share, and
share alike,' sez I. When I wrote to my agint, I wrote ekal for my
pardner, Tommy Islington, he hevin no call to know ef the same was man
or boy."

He had moved nearer the boy, and would perhaps have laid his hand
caressingly upon him, but even in his manifest affection there was
a singular element of awed restraint and even fear,--a suggestion of
something withheld even his fullest confidences, a hopeless perception
of some vague barrier that never could be surmounted. He may have been
at times dimly conscious that, in the eyes which Tommy raised to his,
there was thorough intellectual appreciation, critical good-humor, even
feminine softness, but nothing more. His nervousness somewhat heightened
by his embarrassment, he went on with an attempt at calmness which his
twitching white lips and unsteady fingers made pathetically grotesque.
"Thar's a bill o' sale in my bunk, made out accordin' to law, of an ekal
ondivided half of the claim, and the consideration is two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars,--gambling debts,--gambling debts from me to you,
Tommy,--you understand?"--nothing could exceed the intense cunning of
his eye at this moment,--"and then thar's a will."

"A will?" said Tommy, in amused surprise.

Johnson looked frightened.

"Eh?" he said, hurriedly, "wot will? Who said anythin' 'bout a will,
Tommy?"

"Nobody," replied Tommy, with unblushing calm.

Johnson passed his hand over his cold forehead, wrung the damp ends of
his hair with his fingers, and went on: "Times when I'm took bad ez I
was to-day, the boys about yer sez--you sez, maybe, Tommy--it's whiskey.
It ain't, Tommy. It's pizen,--quicksilver pizen. That's what's the
matter with me. I'm salviated! Salviated with merkery.

"I've heerd o' it before," continued Johnson, appealing to the boy, "and
ez a boy o' permiskus reading, I reckon you hev too. Them men as works
in cinnabar sooner or later gets salviated. It's bound to fetch '