ason's tools. By
searching about at the foot of the ledge below, however, Addison found a
number of rosy fragments which had broken off in the lapse of time and
fallen down the hillside. Such specimens are attractive to gather up,
but heavy to carry home.

The girls having grown somewhat fatigued by this time, Addison and I
left them at the rose quartz ledges, and went on more rapidly, to search
for other minerals. We climbed higher up the mountain side, then went
back and forth for nearly an hour. At last we came to the place he was
in search of, a long crevice extending up and down the rough face of a
ledge which rose almost perpendicularly to a height of forty feet.

The crevice was only wide enough to thrust in one's fingers and seemed
to be lined with large, hexagonal crystals, as clear as water. The
points of these crystals, which had beautiful facets, jutted out past
each other in many places, and seemed to match together like teeth in
opposed jaws. Still higher up in the same ledges, there were scores of
quartz veins, converging and crossing each other in a network; and in
some of this white quartz there were minute, bright, yellow specks which
Ad said was gold. He thought that there was both gold and silver in this
ledge, and that if the top were blasted off, the quartz beneath would be
found still richer in these precious metals;--that being the theory of
mining engineers, as he had heard his father explain it.

After we had looked it over for a time, I went back to conduct the girls
to the place; and with half an hour of hard climbing, they arrived at
the foot of the crag.

Immediately then we discovered Addison, laboriously at work, attempting
to break out fragments containing the crystals, by beating on the
adjacent rock with a large stone. He had already succeeded in crushing
off some of the crystals; but he ruined far more of the handsome points
than he secured whole.

"Oh, aren't they beautiful!" was Theodora's first exclamation. "Do let's
get a lot of them!"

"Is this what the hunters call the 'diamond ledge?'" Catherine asked.

"Yes," replied Addison, "but of course these crystals are only of quartz
and by no means very valuable, save to put in collections of minerals.
They are nothing but quartz rock."

"But they are very pretty," said Kate. "I would like to get a lot of
them to set around our front doorstep."

"If only we had drills and a hammer, with a few pounds of gunpowder, we
could th