“You are very confident. On what do you base your remark?”
“On human nature.”
The farmer looked at him curiously.
“Well, perhaps you are right,” he said. Then turning to the miner, he asked: “Well, did your cousin lose all his gold-dust?”
“Yes; every ounce of it.”
“That was hard lines.”
“It was, indeed. The poor fellow had been in the country a year. During the first six months he hadn’t a particle of luck. During the next six months he made the money referred to. With it he intended to go home and lift a mortgage from the house in which he lived. But when he saw the fruit of his hard labor forcibly wrested from him, he became discouraged, took to drink, and died of delirium tremens in ’Frisco three months since.”
“It was a hard case!” said the farmer in a tone of sympathy.
“It was, indeed. That scoundrel, Stephen Dike, I hold responsible for my poor cousin’s death. There is one thing I live for,” and here he paused.
“Well?” said the black-eyed man. “What is it?”