xpress Cairo Jake's conviction,
for he shook his head so positively that his hat fell off into the
stream, which found a level only an inch or two below Jacob's boottops,
and he stamped his right foot so vigorously as to endanger his
equilibrium.

"Well," sighed a discontented miner from New Jersey, "Providence knows
His own bizness best, I s'pose; but I could have found him a feller that
could have made a darn sight better use of his good luck--ef he'd had
any--than Tom Chafflin. _He_ don't know nothin' 'bout the worth of
money--never seed him drunk in my life, an' he don't seem to get no fun
out of keerds."

"Providence'll hev a season's job a-satisfyin' _you_, old Redbank,"
replied Cairo Jake; "but it's all-fired queer, for all that. Ef a feller
could only learn how he done it, 'twouldn't seem so funny; but he don't
seem to have no way in p'tickler about him that a feller ken find out."

"Fact," said Redbank, with a solemn groan. "I've studied his face--why,
ef I'd studied half ez hard at school I'd be a president, or
missionary, or somethin' now--but I don't make it out. Once I 'llowed
'twas cos he didn't keer, an' was kind o' reckless--sort o' went it
blind. So I tried it on a-playin' monte."

"Well, how did it work?" asked the gentleman from Cairo.

"Work?" echoed the Jerseyman, with the air of an unsuccessful candidate
musing over the "saddest words of thought or pen;" "I started with
thirteen ounces, an' in twenty minutes I was borryin' the price of a
drink from the dealer. _That's_ how it worked."

Certain other miners looked sorrowful; it was evident that they, too,
had been reckless, and had trusted to luck, and that in a place where
gold-digging and gambling were the only two means of proving the
correctness of their theory, it was not difficult to imagine by which
one they were disappointed.

"Long an' short of it's jest this," resumed Cairo Jake, straightening
himself for a moment, and picking some coarse gravel from his pan, "Tom
Chafflin's always in luck. His claim pays better'n anybody else's; he
always gets the lucky number at a raffle, his shovel don't never break,
an' his chimbly ain't always catchin' a-fire. He's gone down to 'Frisco
now, an' I'll bet a dozen ounces that jest cos he's aboard, the old
boat'll go down an' back without runnin' aground a solitary durned
time."

No one took up Cairo Jake's bet, so that it was evident he uttered the
general sentiment of the mining camp of Quicks