Eyelids was getting more and more peaceful and foolish, smiling first to himself and then slily to Granger, as though he had some very happy knowledge which he was burning to communicate. At last he pulled out his hand from his shirt, and there was something in it. Beorn, raised three feet from the floor on his shelf, could not see what his son was doing, nor did he care; he was reliving the past, when there was no Eyelids.
But Granger watched; the fingers opened a trifle and revealed the shining of something yellow. Quick as thought, before the fingers could close over it again, he pretended to lose his balance, and, shooting out his foot as if to save himself, sent the yellow lump flying from the half-breed's palm. It shot into the air, fell with a thud, and rolled scintillating into the darkness across the boarded floor. Before he could be detained, Granger had sprung after it and held it in his hand. He faced round, ready to defend himself; but there was no necessity. Eyelids, having attempted to rise and having found that his legs would not carry him, had sunk back to his squatting position on the floor, where he was smiling foolishly and nodding his head as much as to say, "I've been telling you all evening, but you would not believe me; now I have proved my word!"
Beorn was sitting upright on his shelf, looking at him keenly. As Granger approached, he held out his hand; Granger placed the yellow lump in it.
"Gold," he cried, and his eyes flashed; "a river nugget!" Then weighing it carefully, "Three ounces," he said; "it's worth about forty dollars."
"How do you know that?" asked Granger. "Was it river gold that you found on the Comstock? I thought that it was quartz."
"It was quartz afterwards, but nuggets and dust first." Then, remembering himself, he asked suspiciously, "But what d'you know about it?"
"I ought to know something," Granger replied, speaking thickly and shamming intoxication; "I ought to know something; I was one of the first men in on the Klondike gold-rush."
"Damn it! So you were one of the Klondike men? Tell me about it."
Granger had intended to spin him a yarn about great bonanzas in Yukon, which he had discovered. It was to have been a hard-luck tale of claims which had been stolen, and claims which had been jumped, and claims which had been given away for a few pounds of flour or slices of bacon in crises of starvation; but in the presence of the old man's eagerness, and with the shining nugget of temptation between them, he drifted unconsciously into straight talk and told him his own true story.