they don't believe we've only got to bore a hole in the ground and snake
out a hundred dollars. Why, there's my wife--with a heap of hoss sense
in everything else--is allus wonderin' why I can't rake in a cool fifty
betwixt one steamer day and another."

"That's nothin' to my old dad," interrupted Gus Houston, the "infant"
of the camp, a bright-eyed young fellow of twenty; "why, he wrote to me
yesterday that if I'd only pick up a single piece of gold every day and
just put it aside, sayin' 'That's for popper and mommer,' and not fool
it away--it would be all they'd ask of me."

"That's so," added another; "these ignorant relations is just the ruin
o' the mining industry. Bob Falloner hez bin lucky in his strike to-day,
but he's a darned sight luckier in being without kith or kin that he
knows of."

Daddy waited until the momentary irritation had subsided, and then drew
the other letter from his pocket. "That ain't all, boys," he began in a
faltering voice, but gradually working himself up to a pitch of pathos;
"just as I was thinking all them very things, I kinder noticed this yer
poor little bit o' paper lyin' thar lonesome like and forgotten,
and I--read it--and well--gentlemen--it just choked me right up!" He
stopped, and his voice faltered.

"Go slow, Daddy, go slow!" said an auditor smilingly. It was evident
that Daddy's sympathetic weakness was well known.

Daddy read the child's letter. But, unfortunately, what with his real
emotion and the intoxication of an audience, he read it extravagantly,
and interpolated a child's lisp (on no authority whatever), and a