I was telling about the mine—that Moore ought to make a fortune out of it—when a man standing by, a stranger to me, stretched up both his arms and cried: 'A fortune! Look at it, now! Moore is so unspeakably ignorant that he could not spell out the name of the Savior if it were written on White Pine Mountain in letters bigger than the Coast Range. But he strikes it rich! His kind always do.' Then he added, bitterly: 'If I could find a chimpanzee, I would draw up articles of copartnership with him in fifteen minutes.'

"And then a quiet fellow, who was present, said: 'Jim, maybe the chimpanzee, after taking a good look at you, would not stand it.'

"I was sitting in a barroom there one day, and a man was talking about the Salmon River mines, and insisting that they were more full of promise than anything in Nevada, when another man in the crowd earnestly said:

"'If my brother were to write me that it was a good country, and advise me to come up there, I would not believe him.'

"Quick as lightning, still another man responded: 'If we all knew your brother as well as you do, maybe none of us would believe him.'

"That is the way they spend their time out there. But I secured some lovely specimens: specimens of ore, rare shells, some of the finest specimens of mirabilite of lead that I ever saw. It is a most interesting region. But I don't agree entirely with Clarence King on the geology of the district. You see King's theory is—"

"Oh, hold on, Professor," said the Colonel, "it does not lack an hour of midnight. You have not time, positively. Heigh ho. Here is Wright. How is the mine, Wright?"

"About two hundred tons lighter than it was this morning, I reckon," replied Wright.

"But tell us about the mine, Wright," said Alex, impatiently. "How is the temperature?"

"How is your health?" responded Wright, jocularly. "If you do not expect to live long, you might come down and take some preparatory lessons; that is, if you anticipate joining the majority of newspaper men."

"No, no; you are mistaken," said Alex. "You mean the Colonel. He is a lawyer, you know."

"It is the Professor that needs the practice," chimed in the Colonel. "Just imagine him 'down below,' explaining to the gentleman in green how similar the formation is to a hot drift that he once found in the Comstock."

"I will tell you a hotter place than any drift in the Comstock," said the Professor. "Put all the money that you have into stocks, having a dead pointer from a friend who is posted, buy on a margin, and then have the stocks begin to go down; that will start the perspiration on you."

"We have all been in that drift," said Alex.

"Indeed, we have," responded Wright.

"I have lived in that climate for twelve years. One or two winters it kept me so warm that I did not need an overcoat or watch, so I loaned them to——'mine uncle,'" remarked the Colonel.

"But, do you know any points on stocks, Wright?"

"No, not certainly, Alex. I heard some rumors last night and ordered 100 Norcross this morning. Some of the boys think it will jump up three or four dollars in the next ten days."

"I took in a block of Utah yesterday. They are getting down pretty deep, and there is lots of unexplored ground in that mine," said the Colonel, quietly.

The Professor, looking serious, said: "I have all my money the other way, in Justice and Silver Hill. They are not deep enough in the north end yet."

Alex got up from his chair. "You are all mistaken," said he, "Overman is the best buy, but it is growing late and I must go to work. What shift are you on, Wright?"

"I go on at seven in the morning. By the way, you should come up of an evening to our Club. We would be glad to see all three of you."

"And pray, what do you mean by your Club?" asked the Colonel.

"Why," said Wright, "I thought you knew. Three or four of us miners met up here one night last month. Joe Miller was in the party, and as we were drinking beer and talking about stocks, Miller proposed that we should hire a vacant house on the divide—the old Beckley House—and give up the boarding and lodging houses. We talked it all over, how shameful we had been going on, how we were spending all our money, how, if we had the house, we could save fifty or sixty dollars a month, and eat what we pleased, do what we pleased, and have a place in which to pass our leisure time without going to the saloons; so we picked up three or four more men, and, on last pay-day, moved in—seven of us in all—each man bringing his own chair, blankets and food. The latter, of course, was all put into common stock, and Miller had fixed everything else. Since then we have been getting along jolly.'"

"But who makes up your company?" inquired Alex.

"Oh, you know the whole outfit," answered Wright. "There is Miller, as I told you; there are, besides, Tom Carlin, old man Brewster, Herbert Ashley, Sammy Harding, Barney Corrigan and myself."

"It is a good crowd; but you are not all working in the same mine, are you?" said the Professor, inquiringly.

"Oh, no. Brewster is running a power-drill in the Bullion. He is a mechanic, you know, and not a real miner. Miller and Harding are in the Curry, Barney is in the Norcross, Carlin and Ashley are in the Imperial, and I in the Savage. But we all happen to be on the same shift, so, for this month at least, we have our evenings together."

"It must be splendid," enthusiastically remarked the Colonel.

"How do you spend your evenings?" asked Alex.

"We talk on all subjects except politics. That subject, we agreed at the start, should not be discussed. We read and compare notes on stocks."

"How do you manage about your cooking?" queried the Professor.

"We have a Chinaman, who is a daisy. He is cook, housekeeper, chambermaid, and would be companion and musician if we could stand it. You must come up and see us."

"I will come to-morrow evening," Alex replied, eagerly.

"So will I," said the Colonel, with a positiveness that was noticeable.

"And so will I," shouted the Professor.

Just then the eleven o'clock whistles sounded up and down the lead. "That is our signal for retiring," said Wright, "and so good night."

"Let us go out and take a night cap, first," said the Colonel.

"Well, if I must," said Wright. "Though the rule of our Club is only a little for medicine."

The night caps were ordered and swallowed. Then the men separated, the Colonel, Professor and Wright going home, the journalist to his work.

Professor Stoneman was a character. Tall and spare, with such an outline as Abraham Lincoln had. He was fifty years of age, with grave and serene face when in repose, and with the mien of one of the faculty of a university. Still he had that nature which caused him when a boy to run away from his Indiana home to the Mexican war, and he fought through all that long day at Buena Vista, a lad of eighteen years. Of course he was with the first to reach California. He had tried mining and many other things, but the deeper side of his nature was to pursue the sciences—the lighter to mingle with good fellows. He would tell a story one moment and the next would combat a scientific theory with the most learned of the Eastern scientists, and carry away from the controversy the full respect of his opponent. There was a great fund of merriment within him, and his generosity not only kept his bank account a minus number, but moreover, kept his heart aching that he had no more to give. When by himself he was an incessant student, and beside knowing all that the books taught, he had his own ideas of their correctness, especially those that deal with the formation of ore deposits. He was a learned writer, a gifted lecturer and an expert of mines, and, over all, the most genial of men.

Adrian Wright was of another stamp altogether. He was tall and strong, with large feet and hands, a massive man in all respects, and forty-five years of age.

He had a cool and