When I had finished speaking he emitted a sound which expressed neither approval nor disapproval, but only the fact that he had heard me.

But I was satisfied.

His expression had undergone a favourable change; it was less grim.

After a while he remarked, with a peculiar twitching of the mouth which might have developed into a smile: "The white man will do much to get gold.

You walked twenty days to see a yellow stone that would buy nothing." It was fortunate that he took this view of the case, which was flattering to his Indian nature, and perhaps touched his sense of the ludicrous.