PROLOGUE
There was no mistake this time: he had struck gold at last!
It had lain there before him a moment ago--a misshapen piece of
brown-stained quartz, interspersed with dull yellow metal; yielding
enough to have allowed the points of his pick to penetrate its
honeycombed recesses, yet heavy enough to drop from the point of his
pick as he endeavored to lift it from the red earth.
He was seeing all this plainly, although he found himself, he knew not
why, at some distance from the scene of his discovery, his heart foolishly
beating, his breath impotently hurried. Yet he was walking slowly and
vaguely; conscious of stopping and staring at the landscape, which no
longer looked familiar to him. He was hoping for some instinct or force
of habit to recall him to himself; yet when he saw a neighbor at work in an
adjacent claim, he hesitated, and then turned his back upon him.