The age-herald., 1897-10-03
so he went .to drfnkfng harder tfran ever.

So he went ito d1'fnking harder than ever
 beLlg unable to find the hugge., he uo9d
 his story about 1t in camp for the fil st
 time, and lthe search fd. it became gen. elal. Shortly after losing the nugget sam
 Gled wl-h deAIfum tremenS. l was in there then, and when Sam died 1t was agreed that if any one in the camp found tne nugget it snouId be his individual
 property.
 "Just about that Ctlne a stranger came into clamp and looked around two or lhtee days. Being a stranger, no one
 stiLd anything to him, of course, about the lost Long Potato Nugget. He went away and hhe search for the nugget went on. l remained theTe @ mOnj.h or so.
 "tAlflter a time went down to Frisco
 and the very day I g'o. there there was
 quite stir over the robbery of the safe
 a.. dhe hotel where l stopped, the ex- c!ternenE being chiefly owing to the fact
 that big nugget of pure gold, belong
 ing to a man named Peters, was among
 the property taken by hhe robbers. The nuggG. was described and I was sure
 that it must be the missing Long Po-
 tato Nugget that was hast in .ale pos session of poor Sam Lowell away up on the Cosumness river. If there had been amy doubt in my mind abou, the mat
 ter it would have disappeared when met Ehe mhn Peters, He was nome other than the mann who had spent the three days in camp where Sam had lost uhe nugget. l .rrlmed1ately asked Pc es for an explanation He was unm.slak- ably as ounded when told him the sNo- ny of the nugget. He sad he had only been i'm California a few weeks, being from Illinois. While at the camp on Costumes River, in one of his strolls, he had stumbled on something, and, looking down, saw that it was an old boolt, lying half way in the leg of which was the nuggat. He quickly picked it up, and, believing the find his, said nothfng about it fop fear the mllner5 would object to his keeping ft-wlhIch was a wise precaution-an quie ly left Ghe camp with it.
 "PGalnly, ,then, Sam LoveI had hid den hls lump of gold again, tfhls time while sober, and getting drunk had for gotten u, as he feardd he would. If he chances are that he would have remem- beped where he had placed the nugget and got posSeEklion of it again
 MO trace of the robbers could be found, and Peers must have lef. the place, for
 l saw him no more. Two months later and seeing a crowd of people gazing in a jewellers window, stopped to see whiat the attrac. ion was. When saw what it
 wais almolJt jumped out of my boots It
 was the Long Potato Nugget. I passed into t9le S.orc to see if I could learn how lit came there. The proprietor frankly
 told me thlat it had been played in by a
 sltIlanger at a faro bank in the city a monh before and that the teweler had purchased it of the owner of the bank
 The 1eweler was as much surprised to hear the histoly of the lump as I was that he hadn't heard 1t before. He said
 That if any person could establish a valid claim to the nugget he could have It. That was safe enough offer, I thought, for it wasn't likely that anyone could do that. At any rate, no one ever had of malny vic1ssatudes disappeared from flhe jewellers window the very next d y, having been stoden, so the ieweler said,
 by very clever thief. Whoever tThe thfef might have been, he was no more clever in geltbilg the nugget than in
 keeping it. for from that day to 4hs, so far as I know noth Ing has ever been seem or heard of the Long Potato Mug get"