It was evening in the German Arms at Schwartzdorf. Great fires blazed in all the rooms of that old-fashioned hostelry, welcome enough on entering from the chill, wild weather ruling over the mountainland outside.  
Tired with a heavy day’s work at inspecting the mining claims, which were beginning to attract notice to this secluded spot, it was with a feeling of satisfaction that, after tea, I drew a chair up to the fire, lit my pipe, and made myself comfortable.
 
Presently there was a knock at the door and, in response to my ‘Come in,’ there entered the man who told me this story.
 
In his hand he carried a canvas bag, whose contents he emptied on the table with the remark, ‘I thought perhaps you might like to see these.’
 
Very beautiful they were, without doubt—quartz, ironstone and gold, mingled in the most fantastic manner; grotesque attempts by Nature’s untrained fingers at crosses, hearts, stars, and other shapes defying name.
 
‘We got these the last shot knocking off to-night,’ said 266the owner of the pretty things as I asked him to sit down. ‘You might remember me tellin’ you as I didn’t think we was very far from the main reef. I believe we got it now in good earnest. Same lead as is in “Dot’s Claim.” Same sort o’ country. Reef runnin’ with the same dip. An’ you knows yourself, sir, as they took forty-five pound weight o’ specimens richer than them out o’ “Dot’s” this mornin’.’
 
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said after a hasty glance at my note-book, ‘but I don’t remember any such name. I thought, too, that I had seen all the most important claims.’
 
‘Why, of course,’ he replied, ‘I forgot! It’s only a few of us old hands as knows the story as calls it Dot’s now. When the big company took it from Fairleigh they names it the “El Dorado.” I reckon t’other was too short—didn’t sound high enough for ’em. But if it hasn’t the best right to the old name I’d like to know the reason why.’
 
‘El Dorado,’ I remarked; ‘why that’s the original prospector’s claim.’
 
My visitor nodded, saying, ‘An’ I’m No. 2 South.’
 
‘Ward and party?’ I inquired, referring again to my memos.
 
‘That’s it. I’m Ward.’
 
‘Well, then, Mr Ward, I want to hear that story you hinted at just now. Kindly touch that bell at your elbow. Thanks.’
 
It may have been only fancy, but I thought that between blooming Gretchen journeying to and fro with 267hot water, tumblers, sugar, etc., etc., and my lucky reefer glances passed betokening a more than casual acquaintance.
 
‘Yes, Gretchen, you may as well leave the kettle.’
 
I am trying to air my German, but fail lamentably, judging from the expression on the girl’s full, fresh-coloured features as she struggles to avoid laughing. Even my visitor smiles. Everything is German here—bar, luckily, the beds. Outside the wind howled and beat against the curtained windows, and the rain fell dully on the shingled roof, and the roar of the Broken River came to our ears between the storm gusts.
 
Inside, the fire flickered and fell, sending deep shadows over the pine-panelled walls and the grave handsome face of my companion, the first fruits of whose labour shone sullenly under the shaded lamplight. From a distant room rose and died away faintly the chorus of some song of the Fatherland.
 
‘Now,’ said I, as Gretchen finally closed the door, ‘now for the story.’
 
‘Well,’ commenced Ward, after getting his pipe into good going order, ‘it’s over eight years ago since I came here from the West Coast—Hokitika. I’d been diggin’ there. But my luck was clean out, so I chucked it up, an’, after a lot of knockin’ about, settles down here—would you believe it?—farmin’!
 
‘Now I know’d as much about farmin’ as a cow does o’ reefin’. Cert’nly my mate—for there was a pair of us—had been scarin’ crows for a farmer in the Old Country when he was a boy. That wasn’t much. 268Still, on the strength o’ that experience, he used to give himself airs.
 
‘I think it was two years afore we got a crop o’ anythin’. Then it was potaters. When we tried to sell ’em we couldn’t get an offer. Everybody had potaters. So we just turned to an’ lived on ’em. They’re fillin’, doubtless. But potaters and fish, an’ fish an’ potaters for a change, all the year round, gets tiresome in the long run.
 
‘I often wonder now what could have possessed me an’ Bill to go in for such a thing as farmin’. But there, when a chap’s luck’s out diggin’, he’s glad to tackle anythin’ for a change!
 
‘Presently one or two more, men with fam’lies, settles close to us and tries to make a livin’. It didn’t amount to much. Then up comes a string o’ Germans, trampin’ along from the coast, carryin’ furniture an’ tools, beds—ay, even their old women—on their backs. An’ they settles, an’ starts the same game—clearin’, an’ ploughin’, an’ sowin’. But I couldn’t see as any of ’em was makin’ a pile. They worked like bullocks, women an’ all, late an’ early. The harder they worked, the poorer they seemed to get. Bill an’ me had a pound or two saved up for a rainy day. But they had nothin’; an’ how they lived was a mystery. So, you see, takin’ things all round, it was high time somethin’ turned up. An’ somethin’ did. The next farm to us belonged to a married couple. He was a runaway sailor. She’d been a passenger 269on board. They had one child, just turned four year old, an’ they was both fair wrapped up in that kid.
 
‘If Dot’s—Dot was his pet name—finger only ached, the work might go to Jericho.
 
‘An’ indeed he were a most loveable little chap. With regards to him, we was all of us ’most as bad as the father an’ mother, the way we played with him an’ petted him. There was no denyin’ Dot of anythin’ once he looked at you out o’ those big blue eyes o’ his. And the knowledgeableness of him! No wonder Jim Fairleigh an’ his missis thought the sun rose every mornin’ out o’ the back o’ their boy’s neck.’
 
Here Ward paused and queried,—
 
‘Married man, sir?’
 
‘No,’ I replied.
 
‘No more ’m I,’ he continued, ‘or I don’t s’pose I’d be here yarning a night like this.’
 
‘It’s a wonder,’ I said, ‘that none of these jolly-looking Fr?uleins about here have been able to take your fancy.’
 
‘Well, to tell the truth,’ he replied, with, however, a rather conscious expression on his face, ‘I think what those poor Fairleighs went through rather scared me of marryin’.
 
‘But, as I was sayin’, farmin’ didn’t seem to agree with my mate, Bill—that’s him you seen at the claim to-day—spite o’ his past experience, any more’n it did with me. He done the business, by-the-bye, quite 270lately with a bouncin’ gal—Lieschen Hertzog—an’ now stays at home o’ nights.
 
‘We had a note or two left. We had also a crop o’ potaters an’ some punkins. But no one wanted ’em—wouldn’t buy ’em at any price. In fact, you couldn’t give ’em away in those times.
 
‘The Fairleighs an’, I think, all of us, were pretty much in the same box. As I said before, it was time somethin’ turned up.
 
‘It was a wild night. Bill an’ me was lyin’ in our stretchers readin’. About ten o’clock, open flies the door, an’ in bolts Fairleigh drippin’ wet, no hat on, an’ pale as a ghost, an’ stands there like a statue, starin’ at us, without a word.
 
‘“In God’s name what’s the matter?” I says at last. With that he flaps his hands about, so-fashion, an’ sings out, “Dot’s lost in the ranges!”
 
‘You may bet that shook us up a bit! You’ve seen the Broken Ranges for yourself, an’ can judge what chance a delicate little kiddy like Dot’d have among them rocks an’ scrub on a worse night than this is.
 
‘That fool of a sailor-man, if you’ll believe me, an’ his wife had been out sence dark searchin’ for the child, ’stead o’ rousin’ the settlement. Presently, to make matters worse, it appears that he’d lost the woman too—got separated in the scrub, an’ couldn’t find her again. Just by a fluke, while on the Black Hill yonder, he’d caught the glimper o’ sparks from our chimney. He was covered with cuts and bruises an’ goin’ cranky fast when he got to the hut.
 
271‘Bill had gone to tell the news; an............