' them--but it's on'y a
make-believe company, an' I'd like Mr. McKnight, an' Mr. Peterson, an'
Mr. Doon to come, an' the detective cove too, cause there's somethin'
else there--somethin' else p'tickler too.'

'Very well, we can go an' see McKnight an' Peterson, but they'll laugh at
us.'

'When they laugh we'll show 'em this,' said Dick, producing a lump of
quartz.

Harry took the stone in his hand; it was not larger than a hen's egg and
of a dark colour, but studded thickly with clean gold, and as he gazed at
it his pipe fell from his mouth and his eyes rounded. He pursed his lips
to whistle his astonishment, and forgot to do it; he lifted his hand to
scratch his head and it stuck half-way; he turned and turned the stone,
stupid with surprise.

'By the holy, your fortune's made if there's much o' this!' he blurted at
length.

'Think there's heaps of it,' said Dick coolly.

'When can we go to it?'

'When the detective cove comes, an' I've told him 'bout somethin'.'

'Somethin' good for us, Dick?' asked Harry anxiously.

Dick nodded his head slowly several times.

'Well, if this don't lick cock-fighting. Have you told your mother?'

'No,' said Dick.

'Nothing about this either? How's that?'

'Oh,' said Dick with a man's superiority, 'she wouldn't understand. She
don't know nothin' 'bout minin', you know.'

Harry looked down upon his young friend curiously for a moment.

'D'you know,' he said, 'you're a most amazing kind of a kid?'

'How?' asked Dick shortly.

'Why in the way you get mixed up in things.'

'Tain't my fault if things happen, is it?' asked the boy in an injured
tone.

'S'pose it ain't,' replied Harry with a grin; 'but they all seem to come
your way somehow. Look here--it can't matter now--tell me how you came to
be in the Stream drive that night?'

Dick kicked up a tuft of grass, bored one heel into the soft turf, and
answered nothing.

'Come on, old man, I won't turn dog.'

'I'm goin' to tell it to Detective Downy first. 'Twasn't nothin' much
anyhow. I jes' went down.'

Dick would say nothing more. He found himself on the side of the law for
the first time, and felt he owed a duty to Downy, whom he regarded as
almost as great a man as Sam Sagacious. Downy had come to his rescue in
an hour of dire peril, Downy had trusted him and taken him into his
confidence to some extent, and he was determined to do the fair and
square thing by the detective, at least so far as he could do so