There is a fair proportion of pretentious
monuments, which were drawn by ten-horse teams from some distant
railroad station.
Marked by such a monument was the grave which Keeler sought. The
symbolism was striking,--a broken column, an angel holding out an olive
branch, and Father Time. And this was the verse of Scripture carved in
stone:
"Man walketh in a vain shadow:
he heapeth up riches and cannot
tell who shall gather them."
Forgetting the murdered Frenchman in the forcefulness of the text,
Keeler wondered if Robert Palmer's journey, too, would end like this.
CHAPTER XIV
Golden Opportunities
In California Opportunity knocked at every gate--not once but many
times. It returned again and again, most persistently, and intruded
alike on men awake and feasting, or asleep and dreaming. John Keeler had
hardly spent an hour in Downieville before he had met a Golden
Opportunity. On approaching the town he had passed several short tunnels
dug into the hillside, and at the court-house he met the owners of one
of these tunnels. Smith came from Ohio,--he had for many years been a
teacher, and was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic.
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