“I should be sorry to do that,” said Longman, stroking his long, yellow beard. “But, Dandy, why won’t you go with me? I will gladly take you. You are alone here and growing old. Have you no natural longings to see your native country? Come! come along with me!” “Why can’t you stay here? How do you know but to-morrow the stroke of a pick may strike a vein of solid silver running down to the very middle of the earth?” demanded Dandy. “Ah, that’s it! Delusive hope has been the will-o’-the-wisp that has led you on from post to pillar for twenty years of unsuccess.” “Well, after working twenty years for almost nothing, you wouldn’t have a man miss the chance of turning up a fortune with the very next stroke of his pick—a fortune that would pay him for all he has suffered—would you?” “No, certainly not, if such luck were probable. But, Dandy, my friend, your pick has never struck a vein, and I think it never will. Be sensible. Draw your money from the savings bank, and come home to England with me. That sum will be a fortune to you in England, and set you up in any light business you may like; or buy you a small annuity, sufficient for your comforts for the rest of your life. Think of it, Dandy,” said Longman, with kindly interest in the lonely man. “What makes you so hot-foot all of a sudden to go back to England?” demanded Dandy. “A great, strapping, very strapping young fellow like you to leave the grand field of enterprise to go back to England?” Longman sighed and asked in his turn: “What brought you here, Dandy?” “Well, I s’pose it was the goold.” “Ay, man, the gold—the gold fever. I have nothing to say against it, because it has, on the whole, enriched and blessed the world; or, at least, I hope and believe so. But you, to come out here to the gold country at forty years of age, and to spend twenty years of life as hard as the life of a convict, in the pursuit of an ignis-fatuus that always eluded you, still under the delusion that the next stroke of your pick may discover a vein, is to have lost so much of your life! Think of what I have said, Dandy, and redeem and enjoy the rest.” “I’ll think of it, Maister Longman. But ye hevn’t answered my question. What brought yerself out? Not the goold fever, I’ll be bound. I hev never seed ye handle a pick or shool.” “No, not the gold fever. I was never fond of digging or delving, or any sort of hard work. That was my ruin, Dandy,” said Longman with a deep sigh. “Ruin!” exclaimed old Andrew, looking at the speaker from head to foot. “Well, then, ye are the foinest spacimin of a well-presarved ruin as ever I seed in my loife.” “My hatred of steady work made me an outcast from my home and an exile from my country, Dandy,” gravely replied the hunter. “A great, tall, strong fellow like you to be lazy!” exclaimed Dandy. “No, not lazy; but averse to steady, hard, confining work,” said Longman.