“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the two young men uproariously. “There’s an old fox. He has just found out that the grapes are sour.”
“Well, so they have been, boys,” cried the American. “But talk about grapes, it’s just five years since I planted some fine young vines in my patch and against the shanty. I wonder whether the blights have let them grow. My word, I should like a few bunches now!”
“I’m afraid they’ll be as sour as the gold, Griggs,” said the doctor. “There, let’s ride on and leave the poor old fellow to sleep in peace. He took his secret with him, for his map was too vague for us to find his city of golden dreams. We have spent two years over the search, but we have travelled well over an unknown land and come back, I hope, wiser and more ready to do battle with the world.”
“Oh, we shall try again, father,” cried Chris, “and get real gold yet, not phantom gold, as you call it. Nil desperandum, you know. Never say die.”
“Try again!” cried Ned.
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” said Bourne gravely.
“Better luck next time,” cried Wilton.
“Say, gentlemen,” said Griggs dryly, “it don’t seem to me a suitable time for you to be firing off your copy-book maxims all over the place when it’s getting on for dinner-hour. I want to progress and ride on to the old plantations to see which of our old friends is going to win in the fight to have us for guests and give us a good sitting-down square meal.”
“There’s wisdom,” cried Chris merrily. “Griggs is always right. Forward!”
He led the way from beneath the spreading boughs of the great spruce, out from the solemn gloom where the old prospector lay and into the glorious sunshine of the luxuriant, verdant country, which seemed a very Eden after the parching sandy alkali deserts and the rocky tracts. The mules and ponies kept on snatching at a mouthful here and a mouthful there, as if it were too rich and tempting to be passed; but in spite of the loveliness of all around, the adventurers became more and more impressed by a something desolate about the attractive district over which they passed. The hills and dales were glorious, but somehow they came upon no signs of cultivation, nor yet of settlements, till at last, with a feeling of sinking that was not all due to hunger, they rode right into the very centre of the cluster of plantations they had left two years before on their search for the golden city, to find on their return wherever they went traces of a fire here, completely over-run with greenery, there the remains of a shed or shanty with trees and vines dislodging the props and boards; and though they hailed and whistled it was only to scare birds or squirrels, and to awake no answering call.