PART III.
A GOLDEN LINK.
What I have just written is but the connecting link between two series of events—the hyphen between two words; and I shall not try to hurry on to the strange drama of a few days to which all that precedes it has been but the inevitable prologue, without which there were no clear understanding of its incidents. I am going, therefore, to dispose of a whole year's events in a few words, though much occurred in that time which might be worth relating, if I were a professional writer, able to make things interesting to all, or if I had the faculty of making word-pictures of places and scenes which stand out clearly before me whenever I reflect, and the full times of the past come up for review.
What Jack Harmer and I did for that year truly would take ten times the space I have allowed myself, and have been allowed, and I shall say but little now if I can only dispose of that twelve months in a way that places my readers in a position to clearly understand what passed in the thirteenth month after I had landed in British Columbia.
Now on our landing we had but £40 between us, and I was the possessor of nearly all that amount, about two hundred dollars in American currency. It is true I had a hundred and fifty pounds in England, which I had sent for, and Harmer had quite coolly asked his father for fifty, which I may state here he did not get in a letter which advised him to return to England, and go in for something worth having before it was too late.
"He means the Civil Service, I know," said Jack, when he read the letter; "and I hate the notion. They are all fossils in it, and if they have brains to start with, they rarely keep them—why should they? They're not half as much use as a friend at court."
Perhaps he was right, yet I advised him to take his father's advice, and he took neither his nor mine, but stuck to me persistently with a devotion that pleased and yet annoyed me. For I desired a free hand, and with him I could not get it. I had some idea of going in for farming when I landed. I would get a farm near Elsie's father, and stay there. But I found I hadn't sufficient money, or anything like sufficient, to buy land near Thomson Forks. So I looked round, and, in looking round, spent money. Finally, I got Harmer something to do in a sawmill on Burrard's Inlet, a position which give him sufficient to live on, but very little more; and yet he had not to work very hard, in fact he tallied the lumber into the ships loading in the Inlet for China and Australia, and wrote to me that he liked his job reasonably well, though he was grieved to be away from me. As for myself, I went up to Thomson Forks, looked round me there, and at the hotel fell in with a man named Mackintosh, an American from Michigan, a great strong fellow, with a long red beard, and an eye like an eagle's, who was going up in the Big Bend gold-hunting, prospecting as they call it. I told him, after we got into conversation, that I wanted to go farming.
He snorted scornfully, and immediately began to dilate on gold-mining and all the chances a man had who possessed the grit to tackle it. And as I knew I really had too little money to farm with, it wasn't long before he persuaded me to be his partner and go with him. For I liked him at once, and was feeling so out in the cold that I was glad to chum with anyone who looked like knowing his way about. We were soon in the thick of planning our campaign, and Mac got very fluent and ornamental in his language as he drank and talked. However, I did not mind that much, although his blasphemy was British Columbian, and rather worse than that in use on board ship. Yet people do not think the sea a mean school of cursing. Presently, as I turned round at the bar, I saw Mr. Fleming, who did not notice me until I spoke.
"Good-morning, Mr. Fleming," I said; "will you drink with me?"
He turned round sharply at the sound of my voice, and then shook my hand, half doubtfully at first, and then more heartily.