ed up, and when
he appeared he was carrying a pan of dirt. "Call the others," he said.

All together in the little cabin we stood round, while Jim washed out
the pan in snow-water melt over our stove. I will never forget how
eagerly we watched the gravel, and the whirling, dexterous movements of
the old man. We could see gleams of yellow in the muddy water. Thrills
of joy and hope went through us. We had got the thing, the big thing, at
last.

"Hurry, Jim," I said, "or I'll die of suspense."

Patiently he went on. There it was at last in the bottom of the
pan--sweeter to our eyes than to a woman the sight of her first-born.
There it lay, glittering, gleaming gold, fine gold, coarse gold, nuggety
gold.

"Now, boys, you can whoop it up," said Jim quietly; "for there's many
and many a pan like it down there in the drift."

But never a whoop. What was the matter with us? When the fortune we had
longed for so eagerly came at last, we did not greet it even with a
cheer. Oh, we were painfully silent.

Solemnly we shook hands all round.

CHAPTER XVIII

"Now to weigh it," said the Prodigal.

On the tiny pair of scales we turned it out--ninety-five dollars' worth.

Well, it was a good start, and we were all possessed with a frantic
eagerness to go down in the drift. I crawled along the tunnel. There, in
the face of it, I could see the gold shining, and the longer I looked
the more I seemed to see. It was rich, rich. I picked out and burnished
a nugget as large as a filbert. There were lots of others like it. It
was a strike. The question was: how much was there of it? The Halfbreed
soon settled our doubts on that score.

"It stands to reason the pay runs between where I first found it and
where we've struck it now. That alone means a tidy stake for each of us.
Say, boys, if you were to cover all that distance with twenty-dollar
gold pieces six feet wide, and packed edge to edge, I wouldn't take them
for our interest in that bit of ground. I see a fine big ranch in
Manitoba for my share; ay, and hired help to run it. The only thing that
sticks in my gullet is that fifty per cent. to the Company."

"Well, we can't kick," I said; "we'd never have got the lay if they'd
had a hunch. My! won't they be sore?"

Sure enough, in a few days the news leaked out, and the Manager came
post-haste.

"Hear you've struck it rich, boys."

"So rich that I guess we'll have to pack down gravel from the benches to
mix in bef