“I withdraw my charge against Wycliff,” concluded Baldwin. And Ford Hulbert withdrew. CHAPTER XIII. Deep down in a narrow gorge echoed the sound of the miner’s pick. “Mr. Baxter,” said Colonel Lathrop, one of the owners of the Rattlesnake Mine, “this is too hot a place for an old man like you. If you are determined to work as long as you live I’ve got other jobs that are easier for you than swinging a pick-axe in this heat all day. You know you are not obliged to work. I’ll see you and your wife well taken care of as long as you live. You’ve done your share of the world’s work. When a man reaches seventy-five he ought to rest.” “I enjoy working,” replied “Old Sunshine.” That was the name he was best known by among his fellow-laborers. “It’ll be time enough for me to stop work when I have to. Even if I have done work enough, I have not worked for you so long that you can afford to pension me off.” “Never mind that. I would enjoy paying you your wages better if you would quit mining. If you are bound to stick to the mines, why not work in the ‘drift’ with the boys, where the sun cannot hit you? It’s fearfully hot out here.” “Now don’t worry any more about me,” said Old Sunshine, laughing. “Don’t you see I’m only prospecting? I want to find out what is under the face of this cliff.” “Well, promise me you will quit at four o’clock, anyway, Baxter.” And Old Sunshine reluctantly promised. “McDonald,” said the Colonel to the foreman, as he was leaving the mine: “Don’t forget that Old Sunshine is a privileged character. I don’t want him to work, and had rather pay him for resting. He has been in the mines over fifty years,--was a forty-niner,--but if he’s bound to work let him take his own time, and come and go when he pleases. Give him full time, anyway.” “Aye, aye, sir,” replied the boss. “Nobody will interfere with Old Sunshine. He does more work now than some of the young fellows, if he is seventy-five.” Old Sunshine had had a checkered career. More than once he had been wealthy, and that wealth, which sometimes comes suddenly in the mines, had flown as suddenly as it came. Had he known the right time to stop, to turn his mining investments into other and more stable securities, he might be living in luxury on his interest money. As it was, he was dependent upon his day’s wages at seventy-five, and partly because of his independent spirit, and partly from his robust health and love of work, he refused to let Colonel Lathrop make life easier for him. It was two o’clock. Still the clink of Old Sunshine’s pick sounded steadily in the gulch. The other miners were working in the drifts or levels. Still the torrid heat rained down upon the solitary miner, upon the heated rocks, and upon the rattlesnakes, the original settlers and owners of the gulch.