me a pile of buckskin sacks.

"'Forty of 'em,' says Shane. 'One arroba in each one. In round numbers,
$220,000 worth of gold-dust you see there. It's all mine. It belongs
to the Grand Yacuma. They bring it all to me. Two hundred and twenty
thousand dollars--think of that, you glass-bead peddler,' says
Shane--'and all mine.'

"'Little good it does you,' says I, contemptuously and hatefully.
'And so you are the government depository of this gang of moneyless
money-makers? Don't you pay enough interest on it to enable one of your
depositors to buy an Augusta (Maine) Pullman carbon diamond worth $200
for $4.85?'

"'Listen,' says Patrick Shane, with the sweat coming out on his brow.
'I'm confidant with you, as you have, somehow, enlisted my regards. Did
you ever,' he says, 'feel the avoirdupois power of gold--not the troy
weight of it, but the sixteen-ounces-to-the-pound force of it?'

"'Never,' says I. 'I never take in any bad money.'

"Shane drops down on the floor and throws his arms over the sacks of
gold-dust.

"'I love it,' says he. 'I want to feel the touch of it day and night.
It's my pleasure in life. I come in this room, and I'm a king and a rich
man. I'll be a millionaire in another year. The pile's getting bigger
every month. I've got the whole tribe washing out the sands in the
creeks. I'm the happiest man in the world, W. D. I just want to be near
this gold, and know it's mine and it's increasing every day. Now, you