At the Sign of the Silver Flagon. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold

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СКАЧАТЬ a hammer in his hand, and a "fossicking" knife in his belt. The craze for discovering a quartz reef had infected him, and he was looking for a trail.

      If you can love this man as you proceed with the story, I shall be glad; for he was a large-souled man, who had never been guilty of a meanness. That he was always poor came from the generosity of his nature, which frequent disappointments had not been able to sour; he could never stoop to trickery for money. In his younger days he had frequently been heard to despise money; but I think, now that he was old, his views were beginning to experience change. Else why should he be toiling over the hills on this hot sultry day, with his eyes eagerly bent to the earth, in search of gold?

      He came to the ridge of a range, and he paused for a few moments to look back on the township. The air was still; the heavens were full of beautiful colour; the white tents of the diggers shone in the sun. A world in miniature was before him. Gold had lately been discovered in a large plain which with its busy life was stretched beneath him. Although he was at a great distance from it, he could see it clearly from the height on which he stood. At the farthermost edge of this plain were a dozen puddling machines at work, and two or three dams filled with clear water which had not been polluted. The water gleamed and glittered like sheets of burnished silver; the tiny horses walked round and round, yoked to their wheels; the tiny men flitted here and there across the plain, and bent over heaps of auriferous soil, and worked at toy windlasses, with ropes no thicker than thread; thin wreaths of smoke curled from the rear of the tents, where the smallest women in the world were washing and cooking; lilliputians were cutting down trees for firewood with bright sharp axes which were indicated by thin keen flashing edges of light as they were flourished in the air.

      Mr. Hart turned his back upon these signs of busy life, and descended the range on the other side. On and on he walked, without discovering any indications of gold, although he paused to crack many a score pieces of the quartz which studded the hills. He smiled curiously at his ill-success. "Well," he mused, as if arguing with himself, "but I should like to find a golden reef! Let me see. A golden reef, yielding say twenty, thirty ounces to the ton. Ah, Gerald, Gerald! don't be greedy. Say fifteen ounces and be satisfied. A hundred tons-fifteen hundred ounces; six thousand pounds. And then, Home! Home! Home! Ah, my darling, how my heart yearns to you! But you are happy, thank God, and if I never look upon your sweet face, if I never hold you in my arms! – " He paused suddenly, with an aching feeling in his breast. "I must see her-I must see her!" he murmured; and stretching forth his arms, cried half seriously, "Come, Fortune, and take me to her!"

      He was alone, and no one heard him. For an hour he had seen no evidences of human life about him; Silver Creek township was entirely shut out from view. On he walked, not stopping to chip now, for he thought that he might have a better chance of finding a golden reef if he went farther afield. He must have walked fully two miles farther, when he saw before him at a distance of a few hundred yards a thick clump of trees arranged by nature almost in a straight line, and entirely obscuring the view that lay beyond it. He plunged into the thicket-for it was no less-and through it, and found himself before another thicket of trees similarly arranged. Between the two thickets there were not more than two hundred feet of clear ground. The intervening space was level and bare, and the trees between which he stood were of a great height. The light came through the uppermost branches in slanting devious lines, which, as he moved, darted hither and thither, as though imbued with life. The ground was all in shadow, and so solemn was the stillness and so dim the light in this place, that it seemed like a page out of another existence.

      Lost in admiration, Mr. Hart paused for awhile, and then plunged into the second thicket, and found it denser than the first. In a quarter of an hour he emerged into the open unobscured sunlight again.

      Before him rose a vast range with masses of outcropping quartz. He considered within himself whether it was worth his while to climb this range; the quartz looked tempting. There were traces of iron pyrites in it, and he had heard that the richest reefs were sometimes found on such heights. Moreover, it seemed to him as though the hill had never been prospected. He decided that he would mount the range.

      It was a difficult task that he had set himself; the range was higher, steeper, than he had imagined, and the day was very hot. He was compelled to stop and rest. "Shall I go to the top or turn back?" he asked of himself. He was inclined to retrace his steps, until he thought of his darling at home; he took her picture from his pocket, and kissed it many times. "I will go up," he said "to the very top. I might hear one day that a golden reef had been found on the summit of this hill, and then I should never forgive myself."

      Little did he suspect how much hung upon that moment of hesitation. Little did he suspect that simply by mounting this hill, the means of bringing into his daughter's life its greatest joy and happiness were to be put into his hands. But even had he suspected it, his wildest dream would not have afforded a clue to the manner of its accomplishment.

      He mounted the hill; he reached its summit. Then he found that others had been before him.

      A shaft had been sunk; a windlass was erected. Mr. Hart judged, from the great hillock of earth by the side of the claim, that the pit could not be less than a hundred feet deep. A tree, split in two, was on the ground close by, with its inner surfaces exposed.

      Mr. Hart went to the windlass, thinking at first that the shaft was a deserted one, for he saw no person on the hill. But the sound of metal upon stone which came to his ears from the bottom of the pit was sufficient to convince him that his idea was wrong, and that a miner was working in the shaft.

      A little heap of quartz lay within a yard or two of him. He examined it, and found gold in it. He took up piece after piece, and in every other piece there were traces of gold. He cast greedy glances, not at the quartz he was examining, but along the brow of the hill, beyond the boundary pegs which marked the area of the prospectors' claim. Then turning, he jumped back with a loud cry, for a man whom he had not before observed was lying on the ground at his feet, and he had almost trodden on his upturned face. But another thing that he saw held him for a moment motionless from fear.

      The man was asleep, and in his hair was moving a long brown reptile, with, as it seemed, numberless legs, which were all in motion, stealthily and venomously. Two slender horns protruded from its head, and behind its horns its eyes gleamed with spiteful fire. Mr. Hart knew immediately that it was a centipede-a very large one of its species-and that its sting might bring death to the sleeper. It had crawled out of the centre of the split tree which lay near, and was now crawling from the hair on to the face of the sleeping man. Taking his handkerchief in his hand for protection, Mr. Hart, with a swift and sudden movement, plucked the crawling reptile from the sleeper's hair, and threw it and his handkerchief a dozen yards away.

      "Holloa, mate!" cried the man, aroused by the action, and jumping to his feet, "what are you up to?"

      He was a young and handsome man, with a noble beard hanging on his breast, and with his hair hanging almost to his shoulders. His eyes were blue, his hair was brown. His skin was fair, as might be seen, not on his face, nor on his neck where it was bared to the sun, but just below the collar of his light-blue serge shirt, the top button of which was unfastened. In age probably twenty-five or six. In height, five feet ten inches, or thereabouts; a model of strength, beauty, and symmetry. Such a form and figure as one of the old painters would have loved to paint, and as might win the heart of any woman not in love and that way inclined-as most women are, naturally.

      Impetuous, fiery, aggressive, his first thought was that the stranger had attacked him in his sleep. He did not wait for a second thought, but pulled a revolver from his belt, where it was slung, covered by a leathern sheath, and levelled it at Mr. Hart. In new goldfields these weapons were necessary for self-defence; like vultures after carrion (although the simile does not entirely hold good), the most desperate characters flew to the new goldfields on the first scent of gold, resolved to get it by hook or by crook.

      Mr. Hart held up his hand and smiled deprecatingly.

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