Читать книгу The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West онлайн

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This precaution being duly carried out, he proceeded to unbutton a tattered woollen shirt. Below this was another in rather more careful preservation. Placing his hand in the region of his belt he produced a long canvas package, which had been secured to it, and which fitted closely round his body above the hips.

‘Blest if I didn’t think it was goin’ to cut me in two this last week,’ he said, throwing it on the table; ‘it rubbed me awful, and I dursn’t take it off and give any one a show to collar it. There was rough coves where it come from, you bet, as would have had a man’s life for half the stuff that’s there. Please to open it, sir. Take your knife to the stitchin’; it ain’t been touched since I put it in.’

The end being ripped open, and part of the side of the twine-stitched casing, the quartz specimens thus released rolled out on the table. They were rich indeed—almost fabulously so.

The Commissioner’s experienced eye gleamed, and even the sunken orbs of the miner showed a fresh, though faint glimmer, as the pale stones ssss1 ‘strung together with gold,’ in miner’s parlance, lay heaped together.