tes.

"Huh!" he grunted. "Look at your funny stone."

He held it out for her inspection. The blade of his knife had left a
dull, yellow scar.

"Oh!" she gasped. "Why--it's gold!"

"It is, woman," he declaimed, with mock solemnity. "Gold--glittering
gold!

"Say, where did you find this?" he asked, when Hazel stared at the
nugget, dumb in the face of this unexpected stroke of fortune.

"Just around the second bend," she cried. "Oh, Bill, do you suppose
there's any more there?"

"Lead me to it with my trusty pan and shovel, and we'll see," Bill
smiled.

Forthwith they set out. The overhanging bowlder was a scant ten
minute's walk up the creek.

Bill leaned on his shovel, and studied the ground. Then, getting down
on his knees at the spot where the marks of Hazel's scratching showed
plain enough, he began to paw over the gravel.

Within five minutes his fingers brought to light a second lump, double
the size of her find. Close upon that he winnowed a third. Hazel
leaned over him, breathless. He sifted the gravel and sand through his
fingers slowly, picking out and examining all that might be the
precious metal, and as he picked and clawed the rusty, brown nuggets
came to light. At last he reached bottom. The bowlder thrust out
below in a natural shelf. From this Bill carefully scraped the
accumulation of black sand and gravel, gleaning as a result of his
labor a baker's dozen of assorted chunks--one giant that must have
weighed three pounds. He sat back on his haunches, and looked at his
wife, speechless.

"Is that truly _all_ gold, Bill?" she whispered incredulously.

"It certainly is--as good gold as ever went into the mint," he assured.
"All laid in a nice little nest on this shelf of rock. I've heard of
such things up in this country, but I never ran into one before--and
I've always taken this pocket theory with a grain of salt. But there
you are. That's a real, honest-to-God pocket. And a well-lined one,
if you ask me. This rusty-colored outside is oxidized iron--from the
black sand, I guess. Still, it might be something else. But I know
what the inside is, all right, all right."

"My goodness!" she murmured. "There might be wagonloads of it in this
creek."

"There might, but it isn't likely." Bill shook his head. "This is a
simon-pure pocket, and it would keep a graduate mineralogist guessing
to say how it got here, because it's a different proposition from the
wash gold in t