ore we can sluice it," said the Prodigal.

"You don't say. Well, I'll have to have a man on the ground to look
after our interests."

"All right. It means a good thing for you."

"Yes, but it would have meant a better if we had worked it ourselves.
However, you boys deserve your luck. Hello, the devil----"

He turned round and saw the Halfbreed. He gave a long whistle and went
away, looking pensive.

* * * * *

It was the night of the discovery when the Prodigal made us an address.

"Look here, boys; do you know what this means? It means victory; it
means freedom, happiness, the things we want, the life we love. To me it
means travel, New York, Paris, evening dress, the opera. To McCrimmon
here it means his farm. To each according to his notion, it means the
'Things That Matter.'

"Now, we've just begun. The hardest part is to come, is to get out the
fortune that's right under our feet. We're going to get every cent of
it, boys. There's a little over three months to do it in, leaving about
a month to make sluice-boxes and clean up the dirt. We've got to work
like men at a burning barn. We've worked hard, but we've got to go some
yet. For my part, I'm willing to do stunts that will make my previous
record look like a plugged dime. I guess you boys all feel the same
way."

"You bet we do."

"Well, nuf sed; let's get busy."

So, once more, with redoubled energy, we resumed our tense, unremitting
round of toil. Now, however, it was vastly different. Every bucket of
dirt meant money in our pockets, every stroke of the pick a dollar. Not
that it was all like the first rich pocket we had struck. It proved a
most erratic and puzzling paystreak--one day rich beyond our dreams,
another too poor to pay for the panning. We swung on a pendulum of hope
and despair. Perhaps this made it all the more exciting, and stimulated
us unnaturally, and always we cursed that primitive method of mining
that made every bucket of dirt the net result of infinite labor.

Every day our two dumps increased in size (for we had struck pay on the
other shaft), and every day our assurance and elation increased
correspondingly. It was bruited around that we had one of the richest
bits of ground in the country, and many came to gaze at us. It used to
lighten my labours at the windlass to see their looks of envy and to
hear their awe-stricken remarks.

"That's one of them," they would say; "one of the lucky four