ing eyes, "hast still left
in yonder casket any rare jewels, rubies, sarcenet, or links of fine
gold? Peradventure a pearl or two may have been overlooked!"

"No--that's all," returned Barker simply.

"You hear him! Rothschild says 'that's all.' Prince Esterhazy says he
hasn't another red cent--only two hundred thousand dollars."

"What ought I to do, boys?" asked Barker, timidly glancing from one to
the other. Yet he remembered with delight all that day, and for many
a year afterward, that he saw in their faces only unselfish joy and
affection at that supreme moment.

"Do?" said Demorest promptly. "Stand on your head and yell! No! stop!
Come here!" He seized both Barker and Stacy by the hand, and ran out
into the open air. Here they danced violently with clasped hands around
a small buckeye, in perfect silence, and then returned to the cabin,
grave but perspiring.

"Of course," said Barker, wiping his forehead, "we'll just get some
money on these certificates and buy up that next claim which belongs to
old Carter--where you know we thought we saw the indication."

"We'll do nothing of the kind," said Demorest decidedly. "WE ain't in
it. That money is yours, old chap--every cent of it--property acquired
before marriage, you know; and the only thing we'll do is to be damned
before we'll see you drop a dime of it into this Godforsaken hole. No!"

"But we're partners," gasped Barker.

"Not in THIS! The utmost we can do for you, opulent sir--though it ill
becomes us horny-handed sons of toil to rub shoulders with Dives--is
perchance to dine with you, to take a pasty and a glass of Malvoisie, at
some restaurant in Sacramento--when you've got things fixed, in honor of
your return to affluence. But more would ill become us!"

"But what are YOU going to do?" said Barker, with a half-hysteric,
half-frightened smile.

"We have not yet looked through our luggage," said Demorest with
invincible gravity, "and there's a secret recess--a double FOND--to my
portmanteau, known only to a trusty page, which has not been disturbed
since I left my ancestral home in Faginia. There may be a few First
Debentures of Erie or what not still there."

"I felt some strange, disklike protuberances in my dress suit the other
day, but belike they are but poker chips," said Stacy thoughtfully.

An uneasy feeling crept over Barker. The color which had left his fresh
cheek returned to it quickly, and he turned his eyes away. Yet he had
seen