"'But,' said the man, 'this is not right, Andy. It is too much. Fifty dollars would be a most generous contribution from you. Give me fifty dollars and you take back the rest.'
"'What do you take me for?' was Andy's reply. 'Don't you think I have any honor about me? When I went into that saloon I promised God that if He would stand in with me, His poor should have every cent that I could make in a two hours' deal. I would simply be a liar and a thief if I took a cent of that money. You praying cusses have not very clear ideas of right and wrong after all.'
"The man went on his errand of mercy, and Andy returned and invested his money in the bank again, as he said, 'to try to turn an honest penny.'"
"That was a right ginerous man," remarked Corrigan.
"May be and may be not," was the remark of the Colonel. "It is possible that he had been 'playing in bad luck,' as they say, for a good while and did it to change that luck. Confirmed gamesters never reason clearly on ordinary subjects. They are either up in the clouds or down in the depths; they are perpetually studying the doctrine of chances, and are as full of superstitions as so many fortune tellers."
"That class of men are proverbially generous, though," said Harding; "but the way they get their money, I suspect, has something to do with the matter. Had the man earned the money at four dollars a day, running a car down in a hot mine, he would hardly have given up the whole sum."
Here Miller took up the conversation. "I knew a man down in Amador county, California," said he, "who worked in a mine as we are working here, except that wages were $3.50 instead of $4.00 per day. He came there in the fall of the year and worked eight months. His clothes were always poor. He lived in a cabin by himself, and such miners as happened into his cabin at meal time declared their belief that his food did not cost half a dollar a day. He never joined the miners down town; was never known to treat to as much as a glass of beer. We all hated him cordially and looked upon him as a miner so avaricious that he was denying himself the common comforts of life. He was the talk of the mine, and many were the scornful words which he was made to hear and to know that they were uttered at his expense. Still he was quiet and resented nothing that was said, and there was no dispute about his being a most capable and faithful miner. At last one morning as the morning shift were waiting at the shaft to be lowered into the mine, Baxter (that was his name) appeared, and, after begging our attention for a moment, said:
"'Gentlemen, there is the dead body of an old man up in the cabin across from the trail. It will cost sixty dollars to bury it in a decent coffin. The undertaker will not trust me, but if twenty of you will put in three dollars each, I will pay you all when pay-day comes.'
"Then we questioned him, and it came out at last that Baxter had found the old man sick a few days after he came to work, and of his $3.50 per day had spent $3.00 in food, medicine and medical attendance upon the man, all through the long winter, and had moreover often watched with him twelve hours out of the twenty-four. It was not a child that something might be hoped for; there was no beautiful young girl about the place to be in love with. It was simply a death watch over a worn-out pauper. I thought then, I think still, it was as fine a thing as ever I saw.
"There were sixty of us on the mine. We put in ten dollars apiece, went to Baxter in a body, and, begging his pardon, asked him to accept it.