“Then I knocked about the world a while, and back in Ireland I could not stay, for the haunting thought of her. I could bide nowhere. Then the thought took me that I would get money and take my boy back. A longing for him grew in my heart, and it was all the thought I had, but until I had money I would not return. I went to find a mine of gold. Men were flying West to become rich through the finding of mines of gold, and I joined them. I tried to reach a spot that has since been named Higgins’ Camp, for there it was rumored that gold was to be found in plenty, and missed it. I came here, and here I stayed.”
Now the big man rose to his feet, and looked down on the younger one. He looked kindly. Then, as if seized and shaken by a torrent of impulses which he was trying to hold in check, he spoke tremulously and in suppressed tones.
“I longed for my son, but I tell you this, because there is a strange thing which grasps a man’s soul when he finds gold––as I found it. I came to love it for its own sake. I lived here and stored it up––until I am rich––you may not find many men so rich. I could go back and buy that bank that was Peter Craigmile’s pride––” His voice rose, but he again suppressed it. “I could buy that pitiful little bank a hundred times over. And she––is––gone. I tried to keep her and the remembrance of her in my mind above the gold, but it was like a lunacy upon me. At the last––until I found you there on the verge of death––the gold was always first in my mind, and the triumph of having 234 it. I came to glory in it, and I worked day after day, and often in the night by torches, and all I gathered I hid, and when I was too weary to work, I sat and handled it and felt it fall through my fingers.
“A woman in England––Miss Evans, by name, only she writes under the name of a man, George Eliot––has written a tale of a poor weaver who came to love his little horde of gold as if it were alive and human. It’s a strong tale, that. A good one. Well, I came to understand what the poor little weaver felt. Summer and winter, day and night, week days and Sundays––and I was brought up to keep the Sunday like a Christian should––all were the same to me, just one long period for the getting together of gold. After a time I even forgot what I wanted the gold for in the first place, and thought only of getting it, more and more and more.
“This is a confession, lad. I tremble to think what would have been on my soul had I done what I first thought of doing when that horse of yours called me. He was calling for you––no doubt, but the call came from heaven itself for me, and the temptation came. It was, to stay where I was and know nothing. I might have done that, too, if it were not for the selfish reasons that flashed through my mind, even as the temptation seized it. It was that there might be those below who were climbing to my home––to find me out and take from me my gold. I knew there were prospectors all over, seeking for what I had found, and how could I dare stay in my cabin and be traced by a stray horse wandering to my door? Three coldblooded, selfish murders would now be resting on my soul. It’s no use for a man to shut his eyes and say ‘I didn’t 235 know.’ It’s his business to know. When you speak of the ‘Curse of Cain,’ think what I might be bearing now, and remember, if a man repents of his act, there’s mercy for him. So I was taught, and so I believe.
“When I looked in your face, lying there in my bunk, then I knew that mercy had been shown me, and for this, here is the thing I mean to do. It is to show my gold and the mine from which it came to you––”
“No, no! I can’t bear it. I must not know.” Harry King threw up his hands as if in fright and rose, trembling in every limb.
“Man, what ails you?”
“Don’t. Don’t put temptation in my way that I may not be strong enough to resist.”
“I say, what ails you? It’s a good thing, rightly used. It may help you to a way out of your trouble. If I never return––I will, mind you,––but we never know––if not, my life will surely not have been spent for naught. You, now, are all I have on earth besides the gold. It was to have been my son’s, and it is yours. It might as well have been left in the heart of the mountain, else.”