I lost my appetite, and ceased to take an interest in anything.

Still I had to stay, and listen to other people's rejoicings, because I had no money to get out of the camp with.
The Wide West company put a stop to the carrying away of "specimens," and well they might, for every handful of the ore was worth a sun of some consequence.

To show the exceeding value of the ore, I will remark that a sixteen-hundred-pounds parcel of it was sold, just as it lay, at the mouth of the shaft, at one dollar a pound; and the man who bought it "packed" it on mules a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, over the mountains, to San Francisco, satisfied that it would yield at a rate that would richly compensate him for his trouble.

The Wide West people also commanded their foreman to refuse any but their own operatives permission to enter the mine at any time or for any purpose.

I kept up my "blue" meditations and Higbie kept up a deal of thinking, too, but of a different sort.