the other
man inquired.

Grenfell glanced at him severely.

"I'm not drunk--it's my knees," he pointed out. "Don't cast slurs on
me. I was once Professor of--mineralogical chemist and famous assayer
too. Biggest mining men in the country consulted me."

The track-grader nodded as he glanced at Weston.

"I guess he was," he said. "We had a man from back east on this
section who had heard of him."

Then he turned to Grenfell.

"Go ahead and explain about the mine."

"I'm not sure that that's quite straight," Weston objected. "If he
does know anything of the kind----"

"Oh," said his companion, "I'm not on. If he ever did know I guess he
has forgotten it long ago. He has been forgetting right along whether
he put salt in the hash or not, and each time he wasn't sure he did it
again. That's one of the things that made the trouble."

Grenfell stopped him with a gesture.

"I'm going to talk. Don't interrupt. Mr. Weston was once or twice a
good friend to me, and you have seen me through a few times lately.
Now I know a quartz lead that's run through with wire gold quite rich
enough to mill at a profit, but I can't go up and look for it in the
bush myself. When I walk any distance my knees get shaky. Make you
firm offer--even shares to come up with me."

"Where is it?"

Grenfell turned and glanced toward the dim line of snow that gleamed
high up above the forests in the north.

"There's a lake--the Lake of the Shadows--Verneille called it that,"
he said dreamily. "It lies in a hollow of the range with the black
firs all round. There's a creek at one side, with a clear pool where
it bends, and I came there one day very hot and hungry with the boots
worn off me. I think"--and by his tense face he seemed to be trying
earnestly to remember something--"we were quite a few days crossing
that range, and our provisions were running put when we hit the
valley."

"Well?" prompted the track-grader when he stopped.

"I crawled down to the pool to drink. There were pebbles in it and a
ledge above. There were specks in the pebbles, and specks that showed
plainer in the ledge. The stones were shot with the metal when I broke
one or two of those I took out."

He fumbled inside his pocket and produced a little bag from which he
extracted a few broken bits of rock. Weston, to whom he passed them,
could see that little threads of metal ran through them. "You're quite
sure it's gold?" the other man inquired.

"Am I sure!"