at their owners were glad
to get rid of 'em, were sold to forty-niners at fancy prices. In one
week, eighteen ships sailed from England to go round the Horn to
Californy an' seven arrived. The gold o' Sutter's Mill called many a
good man to leave his bones on the ocean bottom.

"But it wasn't all bad luck an' dyin'. Lots o' the diggers struck it
rich an' spent it quick. Gamblin' an' drinkin' an' work--that's all
there was to a minin' camp in them days. Spendin' freely give a man a
minute's glory. Treatin' the crowd was the only way to be popular.
An', in a minin' camp, where there's no women to live with, no
children to think of, no homes to go to, what is there but the saloon,
an' what's the use o' the saloon without friends! A bag o' gold-dust
was enough for a spree.

"Gold-diggin' don't go to make a man careful. It's always to-morrow
that's goin' to be the lucky day. What's the use o' savin' ten dollars
when a stroke o' the pick or a swirl o' the pan may suddenly give a
man a thousand? So they thought. One miner found a pocket that netted
him $60,000 in two weeks, an' when he sobered up, he hadn't six
dollars' worth o' dust left.

"There was some that stuck to their earnin's, just the same, but they
was either quick with a gun or slow wi' their tongues. Six brothers
come out from England, none o' them ever havin' roughed it before, but
they stuck together an' stayed sober. They were let alone, because to
touch one meant to fight six. They went back to England, at the end o'
the first season, with a million dollars between 'em.

"One man, who started out from 'Frisco wi' a drove of a hundred hogs,
figurin' on sellin' 'em in the minin' camps for fresh meat, reached
Feather River wi' five. But he sold those five for more'n twice as
much as he'd paid for the hundred. An' that was only the beginnin'! On
the way, his hogs rootin' in the ground had uncovered two pockets. He
covered the places an' marked 'em wi' crosses, so's folks should think
they was graves. On his way back, he took $5,000 out o' one pocket an'
$10,000 out o' the other. An' then some folks try to make out that
there ain't no such thing as luck!"

"But is it all so chancy as that?" queried Clem. "Surely if a chap
knew in what sort of ground or near what sort of rock gold was
generally found, he'd have some idea where to look."

"Sure he would," agreed Jim, "but gold goes where it durn pleases, an'
that's the only rule I know. O' course, every prospe