"This is on me! This is my party! Dry up, Johnny!" cried Talbot. "Fill your glasses. Drink to the new enterprise; the Undertakers' Mining Company, Unlimited." "Undertakers?" I echoed. "Well, you all look it. Call it the Gophers, then. Capital stock just eight hundred and eighty dollars, fully subscribed. I suppose it is fully subscribed, gentlemen?" He scrutinized us closely. "Ah, Frank! I see we'll have to take your promissory note. But the artistic certificates are not yet home from the engravers. Take your time. Maybe a relative will die." "Talbot," said I disgustedly, "if I hadn't happened to smell your breath before supper I'd think you drunk." "I _am_ drunk, old deacon," rejoined Talbot, "but with the Wine of Enchantment--do you know your Persian? No? Well, then, this: "Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I'll not ask for wine!" "A woman!" grumbled the literal Yank. "The best, the most capricious, the most beautiful woman in the world," cried Talbot, "whose smile intoxicates, whose frown drives to despair." "What _are_ you drivelling about?" I demanded. "The goddess fortune--what else? But come," and Talbot rose with a sudden and startling transition to the calm and businesslike. "We can smoke outside; and we must hear each other's reports." He paid for the dinner, steadfastly refusing to let us bear our share. I noticed that he had acquired one of the usual buckskin sacks, and shook the yellow dust from the mouth of it to the pan of the gold scales with quite an accustomed air. We lit our pipes and sat down at one end of the veranda, where we would not be interrupted. "Fire ahead, Yank," advised Talbot. "There's two ways of going to the mines," said Yank: "One is to go overland by horses to Sutter's Fort or the new town of Sacramento, and then up from there into the foothills of the big mountains way yonder. The other is to take a boat and go up river to Sacramento and then pack across with horses." "How much is the river fare?" asked Talbot. "You have to get a sailboat. It costs about forty dollars apiece." "How long would it take?" "Four or five days." "And how long from here to Sutter's Fort by horse?" "About the same." "Depends then on whether horses are cheaper here or there." "They are cheaper there; or we can get our stuff freighted in by Greasers and hoof it ourselves." "Then I should think we ought to have a boat." "I got one," said Yank. "Good for you!" cried Talbot. "You're a man after my own heart! Well, Johnny?" Johnny told his tale, a little proudly and produced his required two hundred and twenty dollars. "You had luck," said Talbot non-committally, "and you ran a strong risk of coming back here without a cent, didn't you? I want to ask you one question, Johnny. If you had lost, would you have been willing to have taken the consequences?" "What do you mean?" asked Johnny blankly. "Would you have been willing to have dropped out of this partnership?" Johnny stared.