“He was complainin’ of his luck.  He thought Joe and I got more than our share, and I’m willin’ to allow we have; but if we’d been as lazy and shif’less as Hogan we wouldn’t have got down to the nugget at all.”

An informal council was held, and it was decided to pursue Hogan.  As it was uncertain in which direction he had fled, it was resolved to send out four parties of two men each to hunt him.  Joe and Kellogg went together, Joshua and another miner departed in a different direction, and two other pairs started out.

“I guess we’ll fix him,” said Mr. Bickford.  “If he can dodge us all, he’s smarter than I think he is.”

Meanwhile Hogan, with the precious nugget in his possession, hurried forward with feverish haste.  The night was dark and the country was broken.  From time to time he stumbled over some obstacle, the root of a tree or something similar, and this made his journey more arduous.

“I wish it was light,” he muttered.

Then he revoked his wish.  In the darkness and obscurity lay his hopes of escape.

“I’d give half this nugget if I was safe in San Francisco,” he said to himself.

He stumbled on, occasionally forced by his fatigue to sit down and rest.

“I hope I’m going in the right direction, but I don’t know,” he said to himself.

He had been traveling with occasional rests for four hours when fatigue overcame him.  He lay down to take a slight nap, but when he awoke the sun was up.

“Good Heaven!” he exclaimed in alarm.  “I must have slept for some hours.  I will eat something to give me strength, and then I must hurry on.”

He had taken the precaution to take some provisions with him, and he began to eat them as he hurried along.

“They have just discovered their loss,” thought Hogan.  “Will they follow me, I wonder?  I must be a good twelve miles away, and this is a fair start.  They will turn back before they have come as far as this.  Besides, they won’t know in what direction I have come.”

Hogan was mistaken in supposing himself to be twelve miles away.  In reality, he was not eight.  During the night he had traveled at disadvantage, and taken a round-about way without being aware of it.  He was mistaken also in supposing that the pursuit would be easily abandoned.  Mining communities could not afford to condone theft, nor were they disposed to facilitate the escape of the thief.  More than once the murderer had escaped, while the thief was pursued relentlessly.  All this made Hogan’s position a perilous one.  If he had been long enough in the country to understand the feeling of the people, he would not have ventured to steal the nugget.

About eleven o’clock Hogan sat down to rest.  He reclined on the greensward near the edge of a precipitous descent.  He did not dream that danger was so close till he heard his name called and two men came running toward him.  Hogan, starting to his feet in dismay, recognized Crane and Peabody, two of his late comrades.