Late that afternoon the monkey turned up at his old home. Donald found
him lying at the door, an almost unrecognisable object. Thanks to the
way the robber had carried him, one half of his body was untouched, but
the other half was a pitiable spectacle, and the long curly tail, Gum's
great ornament and plaything, was blown off by the root. The poor
creature had swooned, but that he had lain there an hour or two in great
pain was plain from the way the gravel was tossed about in all
directions round him. Donald was greatly touched, and lifting him up in
his arms as tenderly as if he were a child, placed him in his own bed
and dressed his burns. After a long sleep it awoke, and Donald, who had
sat silently by his side, bent over to allow it to lick his face. The
moment it opened its mouth the miner sprang from his chair as if he had
been shot. For there between his teeth the monkey held the nugget!
* * * * *
Five years have passed. Donald is the richest man in Silver Creek
County, and his great mines are worked by hundreds of men. He lives in a
great house, sumptuously furnished and full of precious things, which he
delights to show to the many visitors who flock to see his mine. But of
all these precious things, by far the most precious is Gum, the monkey
without a tail, 'the finder of his first nugget, and the founder of his
fortunes,' as he says to everybody. Then he tells how Gum found the
nugget, and how it was stolen and once more brought back; and how when
Gum got better, the two went back to the spot where the big lump was
found, and searched and searched, and found lump after lump and nugget
after nugget, until, in a few months, more gold was hidden below
Donald's bed than had come from all the mines put together since they
first were opened. Then the good man calls out a word in Gaelic, and the
monkey without a tail jumps into his arms to be caressed, and Donald
asks his guests to read the inscription on the golden collar round its
neck:--
TO
FAITHFUL GUM
FROM
HIS GRATEFUL MASTER.
Made out of the first nugget--August 2nd, 1888.
[Illustration: THE MOST PRECIOUS OF ALL IS GUM]
End of Project Gutenberg's The Monkey That Would Not Kill, by Henry Drummond