41 Lure O Gold 1904

The Lure o 9
Gold
"
Yes, I see you are,"
said I, smiling, and just a little
weary of the one-eyed man and his poetry.
The pink-faced man was quite sociable.
tell
tory,
He did not
me his name, but he told me quite a bit of his his
and particularly
that which related to his adven
tures in the mines.
While he was talking the one-eyed
man stood by, adding a word now and again.
When
ever I chanced to look up at him, which was not often,
as the creep which the sight
of his closely lidded eye
hole gave me was a most disagreeable sensation, I saw
that he was gazing intently
at
my box.
That glittering,
penetrating eye of his seemed sharp enough,
in its
black keenness, to bore through the firwood and through
the tough leather, right into the midst of the dust. I
wondered, as I glanced at him, if he were sifting out
and assorting in his mind those bright little
pinhead
grains and bullet-sized nuggets which had been my
particular delight as they lay in the gold-pan at cleaning-up
time.
I remember that once I looked up sharply
and questioningly
at him, full in that evil eye of his,
and he no doubt saw irritation and suspicion glancing
from my own eyes, for he turned suddenly
ner,"
to his
"
part
as he had called him, and spoke hurriedly of a
matter quite foreign to the subject of treasure.
[32]