His presence was hardly noticed at first, so insignificant was the man.
His manner was quiet and unobtrusive, his face pale, and his figure
fragile. On better acquaintance, however, there was a squareness and
firmness about his clean-shaven lower jaw, and an intelligence in his
widely-opened blue eyes, which marked him as a man of character. He
erected a small hut for himself, and started a claim close to that
occupied by the two strangers who had preceded him. This claim was
chosen with a ludicrous disregard for all practical laws of mining, and
at once stamped the newcomer as being a green hand at his work. It was
piteous to observe him every morning as we passed to our work, digging
and delving with the greatest industry, but, as we knew well, without
the smallest possibility of any result. He would pause for a moment as
we went by, wipe his pale face with his bandanna handkerchief, and
shout out to us a cordial morning greeting, and then fall to again
with redoubled energy. By degrees we got into the way of making a
half-pitying, half-contemptuous inquiry as to how he got on. "I hain't
struck it yet, boys," he would answer cheerily, leaning on his spade,
"but the bedrock lies deep just hereabouts, and I reckon we'll get among
the pay gravel to-day." Day after day he returned the same reply with
unvarying confidence and cheerfulness.

It was not long before he began to show us the stuff that was in him.
One night the proceedings were unusually violent at the drinking saloon.
A rich pocket had been struck during the day, and the striker was
standing treat in a lavish and promiscuous fashion which had reduced
three parts of the settlement to a state of wild intoxication. A
crowd of drunken idlers stood or lay about the bar, cursing, swearing,
shouting, dancing, and here and there firing their pistols into the air
out of pure wantonness. From the interior of the shanty behind there
came a similar chorus. Maule, Phillips, and the roughs who followed them
were in the ascendant, and all order and decency was swept away.

Suddenly, amid this tumult of oaths and drunken cries, men became
conscious of a quiet monotone which underlay all other sounds and
obtruded itself at every pause in the uproar. Gradually first one man
and then another paused to listen, until there was a general cessation
of the hubbub, and every eye was turned in the direction whence this
quiet stream of words flowed. There, mounted upon a barrel, was