Gundry answered, dryly; "but
it does not follow that there was such a thing. My dear, you may have
imagined it; because it was the proper time for it to come, when my good
friends had no money to lend. Your heart was so good that it got into
your brain, and you must not be vexed, my dear child; it has done you
good to dream of it."

"I said so all along," Firm observed. "Miss Rema felt that it ought to
be, and so she believed that it must be, there. She is always so warm
and trustful."

"Is that all you are good for?" I cried, with no gratitude for his
compliment. "As sure as I stand here, I saw a great bowlder of gold, and
so did Jowler, and I gave you the piece that he brought up. Did you take
them all in a dream, Uncle Sam? Come, can you get over that?"

I assure you that for the moment I knew not whether I stood upon my feet
or head, until I perceived an extraordinary grin on the Sawyer's ample
countenance; but Firm was not in the secret yet, for he gazed at me with
compassion, and Uncle Sam looked at us both as if he were balancing our
abilities.

"Send your dog in, missy," at last he said. "He is more your dog than
mine, I believe, and he obeys you like a Christian. Let him go and find
it if he can."

At a sign from me, the great dog dashed in, and scratched with all four
feet at once, and made the valley echo with the ring of mighty barkings;
and in less than two minutes there shone the nugget, as yellow and as
big as ever.

"Ha! ha! I never saw a finer thing," shouted Uncle Sam, like a
school-boy. "I were too many for you, missy dear; but the old dog
wollops the whole of us. I just shot a barrow-load of gravel on your
nugget, to keep it all snug till Firm should come round; and if the boy
had never come round, there the gold might have waited the will of the
Almighty. It is a big spot, anyhow."

It certainly was not a little spot, though they all seemed to make so
light of it--which vexed me, because I had found it, and was as proud as
if I had made it. Not by any means that the Sawyer was half as careless
as he seemed to be; he put on much of this for my sake, having very
lofty principles, especially concerning the duty of the young. Young
people were never to have small ideas, so far as he could help it,
particularly upon such matters as Mammon, or the world, or fashion; and
not so very seldom he was obliged to catch himself up in his talking,
when he chanced to be going on and forgetting that I, who