But he contented himself by saying cautiously, "You spoke of it first."
"That's the more sing'lar," said Uncle Billy confidently. "And I've been
thinking about it, and kinder seeing myself thar all day. It's mighty
queer!" He got up and began to rummage among some torn and coverless
books in the corner.
"Where's that 'Dream Book' gone to?"
"The Carson boys borrowed it," replied Uncle Jim. "Anyhow, yours wasn't
no dream--only a kind o' vision, and the book don't take no stock in
visions." Nevertheless, he watched his partner with some sympathy, and
added, "That reminds me that I had a dream the other night of being in
'Frisco at a small hotel, with heaps o' money, and all the time being
sort o' scared and bewildered over it."
"No?" queried his partner eagerly yet reproachfully. "You never let
on anything about it to ME! It's mighty queer you havin' these strange
feelin's, for I've had 'em myself. And only to-night, comin' up from
the spring, I saw two crows hopping in the trail, and I says, 'If I see
another, it's luck, sure!' And you'll think I'm lyin', but when I went
to the wood-pile just now there was the THIRD one sittin' up on a log as
plain as I see you. Tell 'e what folks ken laugh--but that's just what
Jim Filgee saw the night before he made the big strike!"
They were both smiling, yet with an underlying credulity and seriousness
as singularly pathetic as it seemed incongruous to their years and
intelligence. Small wonder, however, that in their occupation and
environment--living daily in an atmosphere of hope, expectation, and
chance, looking forward each morning to the blind stroke of a pick that
might bring fortune--they should see signs in nature and hear mystic
voices in the trackless woods that surrounded them. Still less strange
that they were peculiarly susceptible to the more recognized diversions
of chance, and were gamblers on the turning of a card who trusted to the
revelation of a shovelful of upturned earth.
It was quite natural, therefore, that they should return from their
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