"That's all right, we like you. If you will be useful to us, we'll make you rich. Rufus might have had the same chance, but he doesn't appear to want to take it. He just keeps on cooking and keeping things to rights in the cave."
Tom was weighing every word carefully before he answered.
"I suppose Rufus is just lazy and doesn't like to work," he hazarded.
"Oh, no; it isn't that. He's energetic enough when he wants to be. But it's something quite different."
"Indeed?"
"Yes; sometimes we think he's a little cracked. What do you suppose he says?"
"I've no idea."
"Why, that we have made a mistake, and that this isn't Dead Man's Mine at all, and that there is no such place."
Tom nudged Jack and broke into a laugh as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Jack gave a ghastly echo of his companion's cleverly assumed mirth.
"What can have given him such an idea as that?" asked Tom.