"Then what made you go there in the first place?" asked Claus.
"It got into the hands of a few men who were afraid of the Indians, and they coaxed me and my partner to go up," replied the man. "But there were no Indians there. I prospected around there for six months, owe more than I shall ever be able to pay for grub-staking, and finally, when the cold weather came, I slipped out."
"I am sorry to hear that," remarked Claus, looking down at the floor in a brown study. "I have a mine up there, and I was about to go up and see how things were getting on there; but if the dirt pans out as you say, it will not be worth while."
"You had better stay here, where you have a good fire to warm you during this frosty weather," said the man, once more running his eyes over Claus's figure. "If you have a mine up there you had better let it go; you are worth as much money now as you would be if you stayed up there a year."
"But I would like to go and see the mine," replied Claus. "There was a fortune taken out of it a few years ago, and it can't be that the vein is all used up yet."
"Where is your mine?"
"That is what I don't know. I have somehow got it into my head the mine is off by itself, a few miles from everybody else's."
"Do you mean the haunted mine?" asked the man, now beginning to take some interest in what Claus was saying.
"I believe that is what they call it."
"It is five miles from Dutch Flat, straight off through the mountains. You can't miss it, for there is a trail that goes straight to it."