rs fell in silently behind. They
wanted to see Clark when he got the first glimpse of the vein.
Arriving a little breathless, he looked down at the bluish, white
streak that nakedly crossed a little ridge, clipped to a ravine on
either side, and reappeared boldly further on. Fisette picked up
samples from time to time, at which his patron glanced, and finally,
taking mortar and pan, crushed a fist full of ore and washed it
delicately, till a long tapering tail of yellow metal clung to the
rounded angle of the pan. And at that Clark asked a few questions of
the mining engineer who had come with him, nodded contentedly and
started back, leaving Fisette with the pan still in his muscular hands.

That night the breed squatted by his camp fire, too offended to smoke
and wondering dumbly why his patron had left so soon and said so
little, for this was a day to which he had looked forward for weeks.
He did not dream that Clark was even that moment thinking of him as the
private car clicked evenly over the rail joints on the way to the iron
mines. And this indeed was the case, for in the first tide of the rush
of gold seekers Clark had discerned the workings of an ancient rule.
Always it had been gold which inflamed the human mind to endure to the
uttermost. His imagination went back, and he saw the desperate influx
heading for California, for Australia, for South Africa, that mob of
adventurous spirits for whom there burned nightly over the hills the
lambent promise of the morrow, strengthening and invigorating to
further effort. He saw this mob lose itself in forest, mountain, plain
and canyon, a wild-eyed herald of civilization. He saw roads and
bridges, farms and villages take form along the trail it traversed,
till, slowly but inexorably, the wilderness was conquered, and the sons
of the pioneers sat in contentment under their own roof-tree in full
possession of a wealth greater by far than that their ancestors had
come to seek. But it was gold with its yellow finger that first
beckoned the way.

Next day, at the iron mine, he stood listening to the deep cough of the
big crusher and the loose rattle of machine drills. A little on one
side, and as yet unshaken by dynamite, was the knoll on which Wimperley
and the rest had been told what they were sitting on, and he smiled at
the recollection. Surveying the widening excavation, he reflected that
here, after all, was the heart of the entire enterprise. In fifty--i