my body. Well, I made a strike; not like you, Mulrady, not a
blunder of good luck, a fool's fortune--there, I don't blame you
for it--but in perfect demonstration of my theory, the reward of my
labor. It was no pocket, but a vein, a lead, that I had regularly
hunted down and found--a fortune!

"I never knew how hard I had worked until that morning; I never
knew what privations I had undergone until that moment of my
success, when I found I could scarcely think or move! I staggered
out into the open air. The only human soul near me was a
disappointed prospector, a man named Masters, who had a tunnel not
far away. I managed to conceal from him my good fortune and my
feeble state, for I was suspicious of him--of any one; and as he
was going away that day I thought I could keep my secret until he
was gone. I was dizzy and confused, but I remember that I managed
to write a letter to my wife, telling her of my good fortune, and
begging her to come to me; and I remember that I saw Masters go. I
don't remember anything else. They picked me up on the road, near
that boulder, as you know."

"I know," said Mulrady, with a swift recollection of the stage-
driver's account of his discovery.

"They say," continued Slinn, tremblingly, "that I never recovered
my senses or consciousness for nearly three years; they say I lost
my memory completely during my illness, and that by God's mercy,
while I lay in that hospital, I knew no more than a babe; they say,
because I could not speak or move, and only had my food as nature
required it, that I was an imbecile, and that I never really came
to my senses until after my son found me in the hospital. They SAY