He had become possessed of a small estate in the neighbourhood of Cartago, on the proceeds of which the widow was now living. "And will you not return home?" I said. "Yes; when I have got my rights. Look here—" and she brought down a ledger, showing me that she had all manner of claims to all manner of shares in all manner of mines. "Aurum irrepertum et sic melius situm!" As regards her, it certainly would have been so.
For a coined sovereign, or five-dollar piece, I have the most profound respect. It is about the most faithful servant that a man can have in his employment, and should be held as by no means subject to those scurrilous attacks which a pharisaically moral world so often levels at its head. But of all objects of a man's ambition, uncoined gold, gold to be collected in sand, or picked up in nuggets, or washed out of earth, is, to my thinking, the most delusive and most dangerous! Who knows, or has known, or ever seen, any man that has returned happy from the diggings, and now sits contented under his own fig-tree?
My friend Mrs. X—— was still hankering after the flesh-pots of Egypt, the hidden gold of the Central American mountains. She slapped her hands loudly together, for she was a woman of much energy, and declared that she would have her rights. When she had gotten her rights she would go home. Alas! alas! poor lady!
"And you," said I, to the mild voice, "will not you return?"
"I suppose so," said he, "when Mrs. X—— goes;" and he looked up to the widow as though confessing that he was bound to her service, and would not leave her; not that I think they had the slightest idea of joining their lots together as men and women do. He was too mild for that.
I did ride back to San José that night, and a most frightful journey I had of it. I resumed, of course, my speechless, useless, dolt of a guide—the man whom the Secretary of Legation had selected for me before I started. Again I put my spur on his foot, and endeavoured to spirit him up to ride before me, so that I might know my way in the dark; but it was in vain; nothing would move him out of a walk, and I was obliged to leave him.
And then it became frightfully dark—pitch dark as men say—dark so that I could not see my mule's ears. I had nothing for it but to trust to her; and soon found, by being taken down into the deep bed of a river and through deep water, that we had left the road by which I had before travelled. The beast did not live in San José I knew, and I looked to be carried to some country rancho at which she would be at home. But in a time sufficiently short, I found myself in San José. The creature had known a shorter cut than that usually taken.