On my arrival the attendant guided me with his flickering candle down the long barn-like shed to the bedside of O. J. At a glance I saw that death had marked him for his own. Beads of cold sweat stood out on his forehead, whilst clammy hands and convulsive paroxysms of his throat showed the nearness of the end. “Sie können Deutsch verstehen nicht wahr, Herr Doctor?” (You can understand German, can’t you, Doctor?) I nodded assent, when continuing the conversation partly in that language and partly in English, evidently with the object of keeping the attendant ignorant of what was passing between us, he imploringly looked up and said: “Do tell me doctor how long I shall live, I can’t last long.” I shook my head doubtfully, when he gasped out in tones of agonized anxiety: “I shan’t, I won’t, I can’t die without telling you how when I worked your and Mr. Lynch’s claim in No. 6 I robbed you of nearly all your diamonds! Oh! doctor, how I have hoped, how I have prayed God to let me live, to spare me to work again, to make up the wrong that I have done you.” Entering further into details of how he had been tempted, and how he hoped, even if he never could work again, to repay me out of a remittance he expected from Europe, he suddenly seized my hand and in feeble accents, broken by the death-rattle in his throat, uttered these earnest words: “YOU WILL FORGIVE ME THOUGH, WON’T YOU?” Comforting him as well as I could, I assured him that, as far as I was concerned, he might bury the past in oblivion. Never shall I forget, to my dying day, the expression of intense relief which passed over his anxious face and the glow which came again to his pallid cheek by the assurance which I gave him. As I was rising to bid him good night he again grasped my hand with both of his and piteously exclaimed: “Don’t, don’t forget me, doctor, you’ll come, won’t you, and see me to-morrow?” This I promised him, although with inward misgiving that his “to-morrow” would never come. Instructing the attendant to pay special heed to the sufferer during the night, and again promising to return at sunrise, I trudged my weary way home. Daylight saw me again at the hospital. Alas! Too late! No. 3 bed was empty! The troubled spirit had fled, its sins, I trust, blotted out for ever by a merciful and all-wise God! Yet the wretch who tempted this poor fellow to steal diamonds, the sneaking creature who made him a thief and who profited by his thefts, I ofttimes meet strutting proudly about with an air of pharisaical honesty, to all outward appearance respectable and respected! [Illustration] CHAPTER XVII. DESCRIPTION OF THE COMPANY AND SHARE MANIA IN 1881.—EVENTS OF THE “BUBBLE YEAR.”—CAUSES WHICH BROUGHT THE MANIA ABOUT.—WHY COMPANIES WERE FIRST FORMED.—THE BARNATO CO.—THE CENTRAL CO.—THE FRANKFORT MINE.—THE COSMOPOLITAN CO.—WONDERFUL INVESTMENTS.—SLOW RETURN OF CONFIDENCE.