down on the floor. 'You're a liar! You're a liar! Pickles.'

Having delivered himself of this bad language, Billy waddled to his
master's chair, and climbing up by the aid of his claws and beak,
soon established himself in his old position. Slivers, however, was
not attending to him, as he was leaning back in his chair drumming
in an absent sort of way with his lean fingers on the table. His
cork arm hung down limply, and his one eye was fixed on a letter
lying in front of him. This was a communication from the manager of
the Pactolus Mine requesting Slivers to get him more hands, and
Slivers' thoughts had wandered away from the letter to the person
who wrote it, and from thence to Madame Midas.

'She's a clever woman,' observed Slivers, at length, in a musing
sort of tone, 'and she's got a good thing on in that claim if she
only strikes the Lead.'

'Devil,' said Billy once more, in a harsh voice.

'Exactly,' answered Slivers, 'the Devil's Lead. Oh, Lord! what a
fool I was not to have collared that ground before she did; but that
infernal McIntosh never would tell me where the place was. Never
mind, I'll be even with him yet; curse him.'

His expression of face was not pleasant as he said this, and he
grasped the letter in front of him in a violent way, as if he were
wishing his long fingers were round the writer's throat. Tapping
with his wooden leg on the floor, he was about to recommence his
musings, when he heard a step in the passage, and the door of his
office being pushed violently open, a man entered without further