"The worst of it is," commented Chet, "that to-day is Sunday and we're not getting out of one day of school. Unless," he added, hopefully, "the storm keeps up for another couple of days."
"I don't think it'll be that bad," Frank laughed.
Jadbury Wilson was feeling somewhat more cheerful, although it developed that his bruises and injuries sustained when his house was blown off the cliff were more serious than had been at first apparent. No bones were broken, but he was black and blue in many spots and unable to rise from his cot without pain. However, he was philosophic enough to regard the mishap as part of his lot in life and it was easily seen that the company of the boys cheered him up immensely.
"I've had so much bad luck already," he told them, "that it don't seem like much worse could ever happen to me."
"What kind of bad luck?" asked Joe, scenting a story.
"All kinds of it," the old man replied. "When I was out in the West in the early days it looked at one time as if I'd be a regular millionaire. And then my bad luck set in and it's follered me ever since."
"Did you find any mines?" asked Frank.
"In Nevada, we did. Me and my two partners—brothers they were, by the name of Coulson—prospected about for nigh on a year without findin' anything. Then, one day, just when our grub was runnin' low and it looked as if we'd have to give up, while I was cuttin' some firewood for the mornin' my axe-handle broke and the blade of it went flyin' about a dozen yards away. When I went over to pick it up I found it had gone smash against a rock and chipped some of the surface away."
"And you found gold?" asked Joe eagerly.
"That there little accident uncovered a fine vein of gold. So we started to work it and we staked our property and was gettin' along fine when some smooth strangers heard about it and come out to see what we had. Well, with half an eye they could see we'd made a real find. We was so joyful about it that we didn't try to hide it much. And that's where we made our mistake. You can't trust nobody where gold is concerned."