"Don't be in such a confounded hurry! I didn't think a bit o'gold would ha' made you so covetous to get at it!" answered Zed, throwing down the pick-axe, and pretending to be in a pet, though, in reality, it was the tremendous ache in his back that caused him to throw down an instrument of labour to which his aged hands were quite unused. "Nay, nay, I tell you, I'm in no hurry at all," again retorted Phil; "only, as I said before, I thought I might as well be knowing." "All right, Phil!" cried Zed, in a twinkling of time, "here goes again!" and struck more savagely at the ground this time than ever; for, in spite of his affected coolness, the old fisherman began to feel very impatient. In the course of a very few minutes, however, Zed was again unable, from sheer weariness, to proceed, and, although he changed his implement again for the spade, yet his back ached too violently for him to go on with his gold-finding, so he sat down once more to rest, and wiped the streaming perspiration from his aged face with a hand that trembled, as indeed he trembled all over, like an aspen leaf. "Mercy on us!" cried Phil, "how you puff and blow, Zed! Do you begin to feel ill with your hard work?" "Pshaw! how old-womanish you talk!" retorted the fisherman, and started up again, like a young blood of four-and-twenty. But, somehow or other, Zed found it quite impossible to get on, the ache in his old back was so violent. "I say, Phil," he said, pausing suddenly, and looking very cunning at the fiddler,—though the fiddler could not see either the sly wink of his eye or any other of the signs by which the old fisherman intended it to be understood that a very shrewd thought had struck him,—"I say, Phil, what d'ye suppose I'm just now thinking about?" "Can't tell exactly," replied Phil, though he had a somewhat knowing idea of what was coming, for all that. "Why, I was thinking——Oh!" said the poor old fisherman, feeling a twinge in his back so dreadfully excruciating that it forced him to cry out before he was aware— "What! have you found the gold?" asked Phil, bursting into a titter; "have you found it, Zed?" "Found the devil!" exclaimed Zed, growing really ill-tempered at being thus coolly roasted by his old companion. "For Heaven's sake, take care, Zed; or we _may_ find him, with a witness, in this queer place, and at this queer time o'night!" rejoined the fiddler; "but what may you be thinking about, after all, Zed?" "Why, I was thinking we might cover up this hole, so that no notice would be taken of it, and then come and finish the job another time," replied Zed, who felt so much ashamed of what pain compelled him to say, that he could with difficulty get through his speech.