A TALE OF THREE LIONS
Page: 4

I said to him--the happy vendor--'it is a magnificent property, and I
only hope that my luck will be as good as yours has been.'

"He smiled; to my excited nerves it seemed that he smiled ominously,
as he answered me in a peculiar Yankee drawl: 'I guess, stranger, as I
ain't the one to make a man quarrel with his food, more especial when
there ain't no more going of the rounds; and as for that there claim,
well, she's been a good nigger to me; but between you and me,
stranger, speaking man to man, now that there ain't any filthy lucre
between us to obscure the features of the truth, I guess she's about
worked out!'

"I gasped; the fellow's effrontery took the breath out of me. Only
five minutes before he had been swearing by all his gods--and they
appeared to be numerous and mixed--that there were half a dozen
fortunes left in the claim, and that he was only giving it up because
he was downright weary of shovelling the gold out.

"'Don't look so vexed, stranger,' went on my tormentor, 'perhaps there
is some shine in the old girl yet; anyway you are a downright good
fellow, you are, therefore you will, I guess, have a real A1
opportunity of working on the feelings of Fortune. Anyway it will
bring the muscle up upon your arm, for the stuff is uncommon stiff,
and, what is more, you will in the course of a year earn a sight more
than two thousand dollars in value of experience.'

"Then he went just in time, for in another moment I should have gone
for him, and I saw his face no more.

"Well, I set to work on the old claim with my boy Harry and half a
dozen Kaffirs to help me, which, seeing that I had put nearly all my
worldly wealth into it, was the least that I could do. And we worked,
my word, we did work--early and late we went at it--but never a bit of
gold did we see; no, not even a nugget large enough to make a scarf-
pin out of. The American gentleman had secured it all and left us the
sweepings.

"For three months this went on, till at last I had paid away all, or
very near all, that was left of her little capital in wages and food
for the Kaffirs and ourselves. When I tell you that Boer meal was