One day, when he had come into our tent to thaw his fingers at the stove, I asked him where he was working.
"Oh! I been't working anywhere now," he replied, in his peculiar rapid manner, which had about it such a winning, supplicating air as would melt the heart of a stone. "I had a hole up here in the ravine, and there was two other men working by the side of me, and they kept working so" (here he illustrated his words by putting his two forefingers together at an acute angle), "and bimeby I hadn't any hole, and they gave me an ounce not to say anything about it, and I thought I had better take the ounce, though the hole was worth a good deal more than the ounce."
Poor fellow! we could not help laughing at his simplicity, though we condemned the selfish cunning that would stoop to take advantage of it. In the spring, Brushhouse joined himself to two Dutchmen to go up into the mountains, and the three together bought a mule to transport their luggage. But just before reaching Coloma the wary mynheers demanded of him a certain sum for freight, and because he had nothing to pay, having exhausted his all in his previous preparations, they took his share of the mule and departed, leaving the unlucky dwarf sitting by the roadside, trying in vain to find out how it happened that he had to buy a mule and then pay freight besides.
Greybeard, who was "a good portly man i' faith, and a corpulent, his age some fifty, or by'r lady inclining to three-score," used often to come in on a rainy afternoon, on which occasions the following conversation invariably took place:
"Well, sir, and how do you feel to-day?" one of us would say, with a full assurance of what was to follow.
"Oh! I don't know," he would reply, with a long-drawn sigh, and placing his hand on his heart; "I feel so weak about here, it seems as if I could hardly breathe. I shall never be any better as long as I stay in the mines. I was never sick before in my life. When I left the ship I weighed a hundred and eighty, now I don't weigh a hundred and fifty. I can't sleep more'n half the night, and there's that Glass--he'll lie there and snooze--he don't care, and I took him in. The whole tent and everything in it is mine. I knew his father, at home; he's a nice likely man, but none of his boys take after him. He was sick a long time and couldn't help himself, and I had to take the whole care of him. I had a claim at the time that was paying more'n an ounce a day, and I lost it; and now he's got well, he won't do a thing. He made some soup t'other day, and 'twas all burnt so't I couldn't taste a mouthful. How much room you seem to have here! I declare I don't see how 'tis, our tent is a'most as big as yours, and we've hardly room to turn round. But there's that Glass--I told him, when he was fixing his bed, 'toughtn't to be way out in the middle--I should ha' fixed things different, but there's that Glass--I could chop faster when I wan't more'n ten years old, but he don't know nothing--his father's a nice likely man, but none of his sons take after him. Your stove seems to work first-rate--ours smokes awfully. I knew 'twould;--but there's that Glass"--and here he had to stop for want of breath.