oking and so heavy as to
attract his attention. Two of the largest he took back to camp with
him. They were gold! From the locality he took out a fortune. Nobody
wondered. To the Californian's superstition it was perfectly natural.
It was "nigger luck"--the luck of the stupid, the ignorant, the
inexperienced, the nonseeker--the irony of the gods!

But the simple, bucolic nature that had sustained itself against
temptation with patient industry and lonely self-concentration succumbed
to rapidly acquired wealth. So it chanced that one day, with a crowd of
excitement-loving spendthrifts and companions, he found himself on
the outskirts of a lawless mountain town. An eager, frantic crowd had
already assembled there--a desperado was to be lynched! Pushing his
way through the crowd for a nearer view of the exciting spectacle, the
changed and reckless Morse was stopped by armed men only at the foot of
a cart, which upheld a quiet, determined man, who, with a rope around
his neck, was scornfully surveying the mob, that held the other end
of the rope drawn across the limb of a tree above him. The eyes of the
doomed man caught those of Morse--his expression changed--a kindly smile
lit his face--he bowed his proud head for the first time, with an easy
gesture of farewell.

And then, with a cry, Morse threw himself upon the nearest armed guard,
and a fierce struggle began. He had overpowered one adversary and seized
another in his hopeless fight toward the cart when the half-astonished
crowd felt that something must be done. It was done with a sharp report,
the upward curl of smoke and the falling back of the guard as Morse
staggered forward FREE--with a bullet in his heart. Yet even then he did
not fall until he reached the cart, when he lapsed forward, dead, with
his arms outstretched and his head at the doomed man's feet.

There was something so supreme and all-powerful in this hopeless act
of devotion that the heart of the multitude thrilled and then recoiled
aghast at its work, and a single word or a gesture from the doomed
man himself would have set him free. But they say--and it is credibly
recorded--that as Captain Jack Despard looked down upon the hopeless
sacrifice at his feet his eyes blazed, and he flung upon the crowd a
curse so awful and sweeping that, hardened as they were, their blood ran
cold, and then leaped furiously to their cheeks.

"And now," he said, coolly tightening the rope around his neck with a
jerk