There was silence in Jacob Dorn’s parlor. Mrs. Mar had refused to credit a story of this sort once before. Her unbelief had not only cost her a great fortune; it had cost her happiness. She sat in silence, reflecting. But she gave no sign. “People have got so’s they don’t take much stock in any feller’s talkin’ ’bout the Mother Lode. I don’t blame ’em myself.” “It turns out as stupid sometimes to be too skeptical as to be too credulous,” quoth Mrs. Mar. Mr. Blumpitty did not applaud the sentiment. He looked sadly at the lady and then, as though the effort to hold up his eyelids were too great, he rested his heavy eyes on the silver rim of the ink-pot. “Everybody knows they must _be_ a Mother Lode some’ers around up there.” “Why must there?” “Wa-al, _I_ don’t know,” said Blumpitty impartially. “P’raps the gold come down from Heaven.” “Don’t talk nonsense.” “Well, if it don’t come from Heaven, the gold they’re findin’ at Nome an’ in the Klondike, and the noo camps—all the loose placer gold o’ the North,” he reflected, “if it ain’t come down from Heaven, it’s been washed an’ weathered and glayshered out o’ some reef or range, or great natchrul store-house.” “Yes. I’ve read about that.” He nodded faintly. “Ya-as, that’s what they all say. Every man _believes_ in a Mother Lode. But what no man likes to believe is that another man’s found her.” Again silence. Vivid description would have failed to picture for this particular auditor what Blumpitty’s slow and clumsy words conveyed as though by chance. So little did he play the game in the usual way that Mrs. Mar felt the satisfaction of the discoverer in getting at the story through barriers and in despite of veils. In the silence, up above—in Jacob Dorn’s sick chamber—some one was heard opening the window. “And you think,” Mrs. Mar spoke very low, “you think you know where the Mother Lode is?” “Pretty near every miner in the Northwest _thinks_ he knows.” “You mean you are sure?” “I’m forty-eight,” said Blumpitty mournfully. “It’s twenty years since I liked sayin’ I was sure.” “But” (he was the sort of man that needed reassuring) “you’ve got good ground for believing—” She waited. “Last fall”—he looked round the red satin room as though for possible haunts of eavesdroppers, and then he further interrupted himself—“you mustn’t think I found it myself,” he said modestly. “I got a tip—a straight tip.” “From the man that’s dead.” “Ya-as. Leastways, they said he hadn’t more’n a few days to live. Ya-as, dyin’ up there at Polaris! Everybody in the camp knoo he’d struck it rich. Nobody could find out where.” “How did they know he’d struck—” “Becuz he wus so secret about everything. Where he’d come from. Where he wus goin’ if he got well, and most of all”—Blumpitty looked round and sunk his low voice—“where he got his nuggets and dust from.” “Oh, he _had_ nuggets—” “Yes, nuggets and dust, too. Good and plenty.” “He showed it to you?”