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Updated: June 26, 2025
Meantime Shock's eyes were upon the trail, and his heart was ringing with that last word of his Convener. "We expect you to get them. You are our prospector, dig them up." As he thought of the work that lay before him, and of all he was expected to achieve, his heart sank.
Surely enough, when I had the curiosity next morning to go up the ladder and look in the loft, there was Shock's nest deep down amongst the mats that were used to cover the frames in the frosty spring, and some of these were evidently used to cover him up.
I found him at last, busy trenching some ground at the back of Shock's kitchen, as I called the shed where he cooked his potatoes and snails. As I came up to the old fellow he glanced at me surlily, stopped digging, and began to scrape his big shining spade. "Hullo!" he said gruffly; and the faint hope that he would be sorry died away. "Ike," I said, "I'm going away." "What?" he shouted.
The old gentleman smiled up into Shock's face, a smile quiet and content. "No," he said between short breaths, "I have taken the long trail. My quest is over. It is not for me." "Let the doctor have a look at you," entreated Shock. "Most certainly," said the Old Prospector, in his wonted calm voice. "Let the doctor examine me. I am not a man to throw away any hope, however slight."
"Yes," drawled Ike, regarding the cayuse with contemptuous eyes, "he's all right. You can't kill them fellers. But, as I remarked, you'd be better inside." He walked around the buckboard and his eyes fell upon the doctor. "What the " Ike checked himself, either out of deference to Shock's profession or more likely from sheer amazement.
He knew that he could not keep Shock so fully employed as to prevent his going home long before ten o'clock, and it was part of his plan that Shock's first meeting with Helen should take place in his own mother's house. "The first thing we must do," he announced, "is to see a tailor. If you are going to address the General Assembly you have got to get proper togs.
Mrs. Fairbanks stood fairly speechless at Shock's words and at the look of joy and pride she saw upon her daughter's face. "This is absurd!" she cried at length. "It's preposterous, and it must end now and forever. I forbid absolutely anything in the way of of engagement or understanding. I will not have my daughter tie herself to a man with such prospects."
At first I thought it was fancy, and that the soft morning light had deceived me, or that one of the vine leaves had been moved by the wind; but no, there was something moving just as Shock's head used to come among the young shoots of the plum-trees above the wall, and, sure enough, directly after there was that boy's head with his eyes above the sill, staring right in upon me as I lay in bed.
Shock's delight in his eating was so obvious that Bill's heart warmed towards him. No finer compliment can be paid a cook than to eat freely and with relish of his cooking. Before the meal was over the men had so far broken through the barriers of reserve as to venture mutual confidences about the past.
Everything in the shack was conspicuously clean, from the pots, pans, and cooking utensils, which hung on a row of nails behind the stove, to the dish-cloth, which was spread carefully to dry over the dishpan. Had Shock's experience of bachelors' shacks and bachelors' dishes been larger, he would have been more profoundly impressed with that cooking outfit, and especially with the dish-cloth.
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