cover another. One night, in a dream, he
heard what he took to be the voices of the fairies of the mountain
bidding him dig at a certain barren spot on the hill-slopes of the
Sierras, many miles away from the Comstock Lode.

For days, for weeks, for years, he dug, ever hearing the fancied
voices leading him on, deeper and deeper still. Mackay offered him
money, but O'Riley refused to accept it, demanding that he be given an
equal share in the mine, or nothing. He starved and suffered,
sometimes finding pieces of pure silver and pure gold in his tunnel,
which he ascribed to his fairies (but which rumor says Mackay had
arranged to be placed there) and, in old age, his tunnel fell in and
crippled him. From the hospital he was taken to an insane asylum,
where he died.

Henry Comstock met the fate he deserved. For years he swaggered about
Virginia City claiming to be its founder and the discoverer of the
Comstock Lode, living on the charity of luckier men who threw him a
bar of silver as one throws a bone to a dog, or else selling wild-cat
shares to greenhorns. More than once he was justly accused of being in
league with the disorderly elements of the city and having taken part
in robberies. But a certain rough sense of pity kept him from being
strung up to a tree as he deserved a dozen times over--and he died, at
last, a suicide.

CHAPTER IX

WHERE TREASURE HIDES

"You won't be achin', none, to hear all o' my roamin's after I quit
the Sutro Tunnel," Jim resumed, a couple of days later, when Owens and
Clem came to hear the rest of his story, "so I'll cut 'em short. But
you'll be wantin' to hear how it was I got into that queer part o' the
country where I made my strike.

"It was Father's doin's more'n it was mine. I reckon I'd ha' stuck
around the Comstock Lode an' got into reg'lar silver-quartz minin' if
I'd gone my own way. But Father didn't have no use for silver. He was
a gold prospector, he was, an' he didn't want to do nothin' else.

"After the Comstock got goin' good, with big stamp-mills poundin' an'
roarin' night an' day, an' when Virginia City begun to settle into a
sure-enough town, Father begun to itch to be away. Folks worried him.
Gold, he used to say, had savvy enough to hide itself when a mob come
around, an', accordin' to Father's ideas, a placer wasn't no good,
anyhow, after two seasons' pickin's.

"He jest wanted to come along an' skim off the cream o' some new find,
clean up enough dust