information was obtained, and he took the opportunity to sell out his
clouded title and his proprietorship to the only remaining member of
the original "Blue Mass Company," a young fellow of pith, before
many-tongued rumor had voiced the news far and wide. The blow was a
heavy one to the party left in possession. Saddled by the enormous debts
and expenses of the Great Capitalist, with a credit now further injured
by the defection of this lucky magnate, who was admired for his skill in
anticipating a loss, and whose relinquishment of any project meant ruin
to it, the single-handed, impoverished possessor of the mine, whose
title was contested, and whose reputation was yet to be made,--poor
Biggs, first secretary and only remaining officer of the "Blue Mass
Company," looked ruefully over his books and his last transfer, and
sighed. But I have before intimated that he was built of good stuff, and
that he believed in his work,--which was well,--and in himself, which
was better; and so, having faith even as a grain of mustard seed, I
doubt not he would have been able to remove that mountain of
quicksilver beyond the overlapping of fraudulent grants. And, again,
Providence--having disposed of these several scamps--raised up to him
a friend. But that friend is of sufficient importance to this veracious
history to deserve a paragraph to himself.

The Pylades of this Orestes was known of ordinary mortals as Royal
Thatcher. His genealogy, birth, and education are, I take it, of little
account to this chronicle, which is only concerned with his friendship
for Biggs and the result thereof. He had known Biggs a year or two
previously; they had shared each other's purses, bunks, cabins,
provisions, and often friends, with that perfect freedom from obligation
which belonged to the pioneer life. The varying tide of fortune had just
then stranded Thatcher on a desert sand hill in San Francisco, with
an uninsured cargo of Expectations, while to Thatcher's active but not