'Over two hundred ounces. Eight hundred pounds' worth, perhaps.'

Jim gasped and turned to his work again, digging rapidly. Later, Burton
took a sample of the gravel in the dish, and carried it away to the
creek. He returned in ten minutes with a little water in the pan. Jim
could see only a few specks of gold in the bottom of the pan, and his
face fell.

'A shicer?' he said.

'Not a bit of it. That's a good enough prospect. Let me have a cut at
her.'

The hole was now too deep for Done to throw the dirt to the surface,
inexperienced as he was in the use of a shovel in so narrow a space.
Burton continued the work till sundown, and then washed a prospect that
made his eyes glisten. Next morning they bottomed. Jim was at the mouth
of the shaft when Burton called from below:

'Look out on top! Catch, old man

Jim caught the object thrown up to him. It was coated with clay, but the
gold shone through, and Done handled his first nugget--a plump one of
about ten ounces. A little later they set to work, puddling the best of
the wash dug out in the course of sinking; and then the debris was put
through the cradle, and Jim awoke at last to the full zest of the
digger's lust. Pawing among the gravel in the hopper of the cradle, he
picked out the gold too coarse to pass through the holes, and the
gleaming yellow metal fired him with a passion that had in it all the
frenzy the winning gambler feels, with an added sense of triumph and
success. When Mike lifted the slides out and sluiced water over them,
showing the gold lying thick and deep, he felt a miser's rapture, and yet
had no great desire for wealth. He did not fear work, and had no love of
luxury, so that the hunger for riches never possessed him; but this joy
was something apart from avarice. The yearnings of untold generations
after the precious gold have filtered the love of it into our blood, made
the desire for it an instinct. Jim went to bed that night richer by over
one hundred pounds than he had been when he rose in the morning.

Done and Burton logged up their shaft and rigged the windlass, and set
about the methodical working of the claim. The second day's cleaning up
was not as good as the first, but it was highly satisfactory. It was not
usual for the miners to keep the gold about them for any length of time.
If it was not carried to the storekeepers at Forest Creek, there were
gold-buyers--buying for the Melbourne banks, as a rule--who called
regularly,