over his books and his last transfer, and
sighed. But I have before intimated that he was built of good stuff, and
that he believed in his work,--which was well,--and in himself, which
was better; and so, having faith even as a grain of mustard seed, I
doubt not he would have been able to remove that mountain of
quicksilver beyond the overlapping of fraudulent grants. And, again,
Providence--having disposed of these several scamps--raised up to him
a friend. But that friend is of sufficient importance to this veracious
history to deserve a paragraph to himself.

The Pylades of this Orestes was known of ordinary mortals as Royal
Thatcher. His genealogy, birth, and education are, I take it, of little
account to this chronicle, which is only concerned with his friendship
for Biggs and the result thereof. He had known Biggs a year or two
previously; they had shared each other's purses, bunks, cabins,
provisions, and often friends, with that perfect freedom from obligation
which belonged to the pioneer life. The varying tide of fortune had just
then stranded Thatcher on a desert sand hill in San Francisco, with
an uninsured cargo of Expectations, while to Thatcher's active but not
curious fancy it had apparently lifted his friend's bark over the bar
in the Monterey mountains into an open quicksilver sea. So that he was
considerably surprised on receiving a note from Biggs to this purport:

"DEAR ROY--Run down here and help a fellow. I've too much of a load for
one. Maybe we can make a team and pull 'Blue Mass' out yet. BIGGSEY."

Thatcher, sitting in his scantily furnished lodgings, doubtful of his
next meal and in arrears for rent, heard this Macedonian cry as St.
Paul did. He wrote a promissory and soothing note to his landlady, but
fearing the "sweet sorrow" of personal parting, let his collapsed
valise down from his window by a cord, and, by means of an economical
combination of stage riding and pedestrianism, he presented himself, at
the close of the third day, at Biggs's door. In a few moments he was in
possession of the story; half an hour later in possession of half the
mine, its infelix past and its doubtful future, equally with his friend.

Business over, Biggs turned to look at his partner. "You've aged some
since I saw you last," he said. "Starvation luck, I s'pose. I'd know
your eyes, old fellow, if I saw them among ten thousand; but your lips
are parched, and your mouth's grimmer than it used to be." That