“We expect to leave to-morrow.”
“Why this agitated haste?”
“You know we’ve not definitely located Benson Clark’s lost claim, although we feel certain it must be in the Enchanted Valley or in that vicinity. We’re going back to prospect for that mine. If you return with us and we discover it, of course you will have an interest in it.”
“Thanks for your thoughtful consideration, mate. At the same time, it seems to me that I have had about enough prospecting to do me for a while.”
“Do you mean that you’re not going with us?” exclaimed Hodge, in surprise. “Why, if we discover that mine it may make you rich!”
“Well, I will think the matter over with all due seriousness,” said Wiley easily. “I know you will miss my charming society if I don’t go.”
“It may be the chance of your lifetime,” said Merry.
“I’m not worrying about that. Wherever I go, Dame Fortune is bound to smile upon me. I have a mash on that old girl. She seems to like my style.”
“I think you will make a mistake, Wiley, if you don’t go,” asserted Frank.
“Possibly so; but I’ve made so many mistakes in the brief span of my legitimate life that one or two more will hardly ruffle me. If I have to confess the truth to you, that valley is to me a ghastly and turgid memory. When I think of it I seem to hear ghostly voices, and I remember Worthington raving and ranting about death and destruction, and I picture him as we discovered him in the thicket, dead in the clutch of another dead man. These things are grewsome to me, and I fain would forget them.”