Near the uneven road among the hills a small field of stony ground lay between woods and cultivated land. Nothing grew upon it and no house could be seen from it. The sun beat upon it and crows flew over it to and from the woods.

Along the road trudged a thin old negro with stooping back and gray wool. His knees were bent and his cumbrously shod feet pointed far outward from his line of progress. He wore an aged frock coat and a battered stiff hat, although the month was June. His small face, beginning with a smoothly curved forehead and ending with a cleanly cut chin, was mild and conciliating, shiny, and of the colour of light chocolate. He carried a tin bucket full of cherries. Pop Thornberry was returning to the town.

Pop, whose proper name was Moses, and who was a deacon in the African Methodist Church, made his living this way and that way. He did odd jobs for people, and he fished and hunted when fishing and hunting were in season.

On this June day he had risen early and walked three miles to pick cherries “on shares.” He had picked ten quarts and left four of them with the farmer whose trees had produced them. At six cents a quart he would profit thirty-six cents by his walk of six miles and his work of a half-day.

The sun was scorching and Pop was tired. He decided to rest in the barren field, at its very edge in shade of the woods. He climbed the zigzag fence with some labour and at the expense of a few of his cherries. He sat down upon a little knob of earth, took off his hat, drew a red handkerchief from the inside thereof, and slowly wiped his perspiring brow.

He looked up at the sky, which was so brightly blue that it made his eyes blink. He sought optical relief in the dark green of the woods. Then, in steadying his pail of cherries between his legs, he turned his glance to the ground in front of him.

His attention was caught by a lump of earth that sparkled at points In the sun's rays, a mere clod composed of clay and mica, lying In the dry bed of a bygone streamlet. Because it glittered he picked it up and examined it. After a time he bethought him that he was yet two and a half miles from town and very hungry. He arose, somewhat stiff, and put the shining clod in his coat-tail pocket. On his way back to the road he noticed other little earth lumps that shone. He resumed his walk townward, his knees shaking regularly at every step, as was their wont.

At three o'clock in the afternoon he had reached home, sold his cherries, and dined on dried beef and bread in his little unpainted wooden house on the edge of the creek at the back of the town.

He owned his house and a small lot upon which it stood. Near it was a flour-mill, whose owner held a mortgage upon Pop's house and lot. The old negro had been compelled to borrow $200 to pay bills incurred during the illness and subsequent funeral of the late Mrs. Thornberry, and thus to avoid a sheriff's sale. Hence came the mortgage. It would expire on the 10th of September. Pop was almost ready to meet that date. He already had $192 hidden in his cellar, unknown to any one.

He had heard rumours of the mill-owner's desire to build an addition to his mill. To do this would necessitate the acquisition of contiguous property. But Pop had not suspected any ulterior motive when the miller had offered to lend him the money.

“I kin soon lay by 'nuff t' pay off d' mohgage, w'en I ain't got no one but m'se'f t' puvvide foh no moah,” he had said, after the loan had been made.

And, having dined on this June day, he took twenty cents from the amount received for cherries and placed it in a cigar-box to be added to the $192. He kept that sixteen cents with which to purchase provisions for to-morrow, and then he walked down the quiet street to the railway station. He often made a dime by carrying some one's satchel from the station to the hotel.

The railroad division superintendent, a well-fed and easy-going man, came down from his office on the second floor of the station building and saw Pop sitting on a baggage-truck. The old negro, forgetful of the clod in his coat-tail pocket, had felt it when he sat down. He had taken it out of his pocket and was now casually looking at it as he held it in his hand.

“Hello, Pop!” said the division superintendent, upon whose hand time was hanging heavily. “What have you there?”

“Doan' know, Mistah Monroe. Doan' know, sah. Looks like jes' a chunk o' mud.”

He held out the clod to Mr. Monroe.

The spectacle of the division superintendent talking to the old negro attracted a group of lazy fellows,—the driver of an express wagon, the man who hauls the mail to the post-office, a boy who sold fruit to passengers on the train, two porters, with tin signs upon their hats, who solicited patronage from the hotels.

“Why, Pop,” said the superintendent, winking to the expressman, “this lump looks as though it contained gold.”

“Yes,” put in the expressman, “that's how gold comes in a mine. I've often handled it. That's the stuff, sure.”

The fruit-selling boy and the mail-man grinned. Pop Thornberry opened wide his mouth and eyes and softly repeated the word:

“Goal!”

“I'd be careful of it,” advised Mr. Monroe, handing the clod back to the negro.

Pop took it with a trembling hand and looked at it. Presently he asked:

“W'at'll you give me foh dat air goal, Mistah Monroe.”

“Oh, a piece like that would be no use to me. It has to be washed and it wouldn't be worth while putting just one piece through the whole process of cleaning. Now. If you have a lot of it, we might go into partnership in the gold business.”

Before the old man could answer to this pleasantry a whistle was heard up the track, and Pop was forgotten in the excitement attending the arrival of the train.

Dislodged from the baggage-truck, the old man looked around for Mr. Monroe, but the superintendent had disappeared. Pop did not seek to carry any satchels that day. His mind was full of other matters. He went behind the station and sat down beside the river.

“Goal!” That meant proper tombstones for the graves of his wife and children, a new pulpit for the African Methodist Church, equal to that of the African Baptist Church, future ease for his somewhat weary legs and arms and back.

The next afternoon the division superintendent found himself awaited at his office door by Pop Thornberry, who was very dusty and who carried a basket heavy with clods of clay and mica. He had been out to the arid field that morning.

“H-sh!” whispered Pop. “Doan' say a word, Mistah Monroe! Hyah's a lot o' dem air goal lumps, and I know weah dey's bushels moah,—plenty 'nuff to go into pahtnehship on.”

The superintendent, looked bewildered, then amused, then ashamed. Embarrassed for a reply, he finally said:

“I haven't time to talk to you now, Pop. Besides, I've made up my mind not to go into the gold business. You see, I'm rich enough already. Good day.”

Thereafter Pop lay in wait for Mr. Monroe daily, but the superintendent always avoided him. Pop neglected to earn his living and spent his time going about town with his basket of clods in search of the superintendent. Finally being openly ignored by Mr. Monroe when the two met face to face, Pop became angry and took his secret to a jeweller on Main Street. The jeweller laughed and told Pop that the gold in the basket must be worth at least a thousand dollars, but he was not in a position to buy crude gold. Then the jeweller made known to many that Pop Thornberry was crazy over some lumps of mud and mica that he mistook for gold.

After that, people would stop Pop on the street and say:

“Let's see a piece of the gold in your basket.”

Pop, astonished that his secret was out, but somewhat proud at being thought the possessor of a treasure, would hesitate and then comply. The small boys soon recognized in Pop's delusion a new means of fun. Observing the solicitude with which he watched his clod while out of his own hands, they would innocently ask for a glimpse into his basket. This granted, they would grasp a piece of his treasure and run away, greatly annoying the old man, who was in a state of keen distress until he recovered the abstracted clod. These affairs between Pop and the boys were of hourly recurrence. They diverted barroom loungers and passers-by.

Pop called on one local capitalist after another, seeking one who would buy his gold or aid into preparing it for the market. All laughed at his delusion, deeming it harmless, and all gave him good reason for not accepting his offer of business partnership. So he went from the bank president to the baker, from the member of congress for whom he had voted to the barber, from the hotel proprietor to the bartender. The negroes of the town, feeling that their race was humiliated in Pop, began to hold aloof from him. No serious-minded person who learned of his delusion gave it a second thought.

“Say Pop, where do you get this gold, anyhow?” asked a tobacco-chewing gamin at the railroad station one day.

“Dat's my business,” replied Thornberry, with some dignity.

“Oh,” said his questioner, “I know. Tobe McStenger followed you out the other day and saw where you got it. He'd a brung some in hisself, but it wasn't on his property.”

“Yes, Pop, you better look out,” put in a telegraph operator, “or you'll be taken up for trespassing. 'Tisn't your land, you know, where you find your gold.”

There was no truth in the assertion of the gamin. No one had taken the trouble to follow Pop in his semiweekly excursions to the barren field. But the old man knew that the field was not his. A ludicrous expression of overwhelming fright came over his face.

Three days afterward, the farmer who owned the worthless field was astonished when Pop offered to buy it.

“But what on earth do you want that land fer?” asked the farmer, sitting on his barnyard fence.

Pop made a guilty attempt to appear guileless, and told the farmer that he wished to build a shanty and raise potatoes. He was tired of living in town and sought the quietude of the hills.

“Bein' as dat ere fiel' ain't good foh much, I thought you might be willin' to paht with it,” explained Pop.

The farmer eventually agreed to build a shanty on the field and sell it to Pop for $180. Pop desired immediate occupancy. There was a legal hitch, owing to the badness of the land and the questionable condition of Pop's mind. But the transfer of the property was finally recorded.

Pop no longer had to fear arrest for trespass. His gold field was now legally his. But he was still kept uneasy by his inability to make his gold marketable. His uneasiness increased as September approached. He had applied to the purchase of the field the sum saved to cancel the mortgage upon his house at the rear end of the town.

The three days before the foreclosure of the mortgage were days of exquisite anguish to Pop. When the foreclosure came and he and his goods were turned out on the banks of the creek to make room for the mill-owner's improvements, his mental turmoil ended. He took the crisis calmly.

“Jes' wait,” he said to a neighbour who had stopped at sight of the moving-out. “Wait till I get dat ere goal on de mahket. I'll bull' a mill dat'll drive dis yer mill out o' d' business. Den I'll done buy back dis yer ol' home.”

But the next day, when the unexpected happened,—when builders began to tear down his house,—the enormity of his deed dawned upon him. After a day of moaning and staring, as he sat amidst his household goods on the bank of the creek, he became animated by a deep rage against the mill-owner. Now more than ever had he a special purpose for enriching himself by means of his treasure across the hill.

The coming of two circuses in succession had taken the interest of the boys away from Pop during August and part of September. Now they turned again to him for amusement. First they besieged the abandoned stable to which he had conveyed his goods, and in which he slept,—for he had not found will to betake himself from the town he had so long inhabited, and his shanty in the field remained unoccupied. His purchase of the land had betrayed to general knowledge the location of his treasure, of which he continued to bring in new specimens.

One October day he had just come from vainly attempting to induce the postmaster to join him in the enterprise of exploiting his gold-field. In front of the post-office, he was met by some boys coming noisily from school. They surrounded him and demanded to see the gold in his basket. As the town policeman was sauntering up the street, Pop felt safe in refusing. The boys, also observing the officer of the law, contented themselves with retaliating in words only,

“Say, Pop,” cried one of them, “you'd better keep an eye on your gold-field. Nick Hennessey knows where it is, and he's gittin' up a diggin' party to take a wagon out some night and bring away all your gold.”

The boys, laughing at this quickly invented announcement, ran off after a hand-organ. The old man stood perfectly still, or as nearly so as the feebleness of his legs would permit.

That evening Pop was missing from the town. And when Abraham Wesley, who had often lent his shotgun to the old man, went to look for that weapon, intending to shoot glass balls in the fairgrounds across the river, the fowling-piece too was missing.

Pop had gone out to protect his possession. Three nights passed and three days. The few country folk and others who travelled that way during this time saw the old man walking about in his field or sitting in front of his shanty, his shotgun on his shoulders, his eyes fixed suspiciously on all who might become intruders. Night and day he patrolled his little domain.

At dusk of the third day a lively party was returning to the town in a wagon from a search for nuts. The full moon was rising and the merrymakers were singing. One of the girls was thirsty. When she saw the shanty in the rugged field, she asked a young man to get her a glass of water at the hut. The wagon stopped and the youth climbed astride the rail fence. Suddenly an unnaturally shrill and excited voice was heard:

“Hyah, you, doan' come no farder! Dese yer's my premises!”

From behind the empty shanty appeared the thin old negro, bareheaded, his shotgun at his shoulder, a striking figure against the rising moon.

The young man descended from the fence into the field. There came a flash and a crack from Pop Thornberry's gun. The youth felt the sting of a piece of birdshot in his leg. Howling and limping, he turned quickly over the fence into the wagon, which made a hasty flight.

The next morning some idlers went out from the town to the scene of the adventure. They found the old man lying hatless in the middle of the field, face downwards, upon the shotgun. He had died of sheer exhaustion, on guard—and on his own land, as befit an honest citizen who had never intruded upon the peace of other men.