“I haven't time to talk to you now, Pop. Besides, I've made up my mind not to go into the gold business. You see, I'm rich enough already. Good day.” Thereafter Pop lay in wait for Mr. Monroe daily, but the superintendent always avoided him. Pop neglected to earn his living and spent his time going about town with his basket of clods in search of the superintendent. Finally being openly ignored by Mr. Monroe when the two met face to face, Pop became angry and took his secret to a jeweller on Main Street. The jeweller laughed and told Pop that the gold in the basket must be worth at least a thousand dollars, but he was not in a position to buy crude gold. Then the jeweller made known to many that Pop Thornberry was crazy over some lumps of mud and mica that he mistook for gold. After that, people would stop Pop on the street and say: “Let's see a piece of the gold in your basket.” Pop, astonished that his secret was out, but somewhat proud at being thought the possessor of a treasure, would hesitate and then comply. The small boys soon recognized in Pop's delusion a new means of fun. Observing the solicitude with which he watched his clod while out of his own hands, they would innocently ask for a glimpse into his basket. This granted, they would grasp a piece of his treasure and run away, greatly annoying the old man, who was in a state of keen distress until he recovered the abstracted clod. These affairs between Pop and the boys were of hourly recurrence. They diverted barroom loungers and passers-by. Pop called on one local capitalist after another, seeking one who would buy his gold or aid into preparing it for the market. All laughed at his delusion, deeming it harmless, and all gave him good reason for not accepting his offer of business partnership. So he went from the bank president to the baker, from the member of congress for whom he had voted to the barber, from the hotel proprietor to the bartender. The negroes of the town, feeling that their race was humiliated in Pop, began to hold aloof from him. No serious-minded person who learned of his delusion gave it a second thought. “Say Pop, where do you get this gold, anyhow?” asked a tobacco-chewing gamin at the railroad station one day. “Dat's my business,” replied Thornberry, with some dignity. “Oh,” said his questioner, “I know. Tobe McStenger followed you out the other day and saw where you got it. He'd a brung some in hisself, but it wasn't on his property.” “Yes, Pop, you better look out,” put in a telegraph operator, “or you'll be taken up for trespassing. 'Tisn't your land, you know, where you find your gold.” There was no truth in the assertion of the gamin. No one had taken the trouble to follow Pop in his semiweekly excursions to the barren field. But the old man knew that the field was not his. A ludicrous expression of overwhelming fright came over his face.