his deliberate drawl:

"Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work is too disagreeable.
Let's go to the house and wait till it clears up."

Gillis had just taken out a pan of earth. "Bring one more pail, Sam," he
pleaded.

"I won't do it, Jim! Not a drop! Not if I knew there was a million
dollars in that pan!"

They left the pan standing there and went back to Angel's Camp. The rain
continued and they returned to jackass Hill without visiting their claim
again. Meantime the rain had washed away the top of the pan of earth
left standing on the slope above Angel's, and exposed a handful of
nuggets-pure gold. Two strangers came along and, observing it, had sat
down to wait until the thirty-day claim-notice posted by Jim Gillis
should expire. They did not mind the rain--not with that gold in sight
--and the minute the thirty days were up they followed the lead a few
pans further, and took out-some say ten, some say twenty, thousand
dollars. It was a good pocket. Mark Twain missed it by one pail of
water. Still, it is just as well, perhaps, when one remembers The
Jumping Frog.

Matters having quieted down in San Francisco, he returned and took up his
work again. Artemus Ward, whom he had met in Virginia City, wrote him
for something to use in his (Ward's) new book. Clemens sent the frog
story, but he had been dilatory in preparing it, and when it reached New
York, Carleton, the publisher, had Ward's book about ready for the press.
It did not seem worth while to Carleton to include the frog story, and