“It looks good in the drift, surely; and, Jim, if we break into an ore body any time, it will not surprise me.”

“Nor me, either, Jack; and if we strike ore here, it ought to be good, because, as I reckon it, since we left the Gould and Curry shaft, we have drifted out of the G. & C. ground, clear through the Best and Belcher, and some distance into the Consolidated Virginia, and by the trend of the lode, if we could find an ore body here, it would be in regular course from the Spanish and Ophir croppings.”

“How long have you worked here, and how much have you saved, Jack?”

“It is three years and a month since I went to work in the Belcher,” was the reply; “I made $400 in Crown Point stocks, and I have saved altogether $2,800 and odd.”

“I beat you by a year’s work, Jack, and I have, I believe, $3,300 or $3,400 in the bank.  Suppose we try a little gamble in stocks.  If we could get an ore body here, this stock would double in a week, and it will not fall very much lower if we do not find anything.”

“All right, Jim, if you say so.  Meet me to-morrow at eleven o’clock at the California Bank, and we will put in and buy a few shares.”

“Agreed,” was the answer; “but our twenty minutes are up and we must go.  But, Jack, mum must be the word.”

“Mum goes,” said Jack.

It was a queer spot where this talk was held.  It was by the air-pipe in the drift which was run from the 1,200-foot level of the Gould and Curry shaft on the Comstock ledge in Nevada, north toward where the great bonanza was found in the Consolidated Virginia Mine.  In the face of the drift the temperature was 120 degrees, and miners could work for only forty minutes and then had to retire to the air-pipe to cool off.  It was while resting at the air-pipe that these men, James Sedgwick and John Browning, talked.

They were stripped from the waist up; all their clothing consisted of canvas pantaloons held up by a belt, and miners’ shoes; they each had a little band around the head in which was fastened a miner’s candlestick.  Thus exposed, in the candlelight, they were handsome men.  The excessive perspiration caused by the heat of the mine made their faces as fair as the faces of women, and as they lounged, half-naked, carelessly in the drift, their muscles stood out in knots, and in the dim light of the candles, as they rose to return to work, their movements were supple and elastic as those of caged lions.  The one who answered to the name of Browning was shorter than the other by an inch, but deeper-chested; the candlelight showed that his eyes were blue, and his mustache and short curly hair were of chestnut color.  The other was a little taller, but not so compactly built, and in the uncertain light his eyes, hair and mustache seemed to be black; but really his eyes were gray and his hair brown.  Both were young, perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age, and both were perfect pictures of good health and good nature.