first flag, a red shirt
heroically sacrificed, was displayed from a long-handled shovel to
the gaze of admirers below. When he at last reached the summit, the
mysterious hush was still in the air, as if in breathless sympathy with
his expedition. In the west, the plain was faintly illuminated, but
disclosed no moving figures. He turned towards the rising moon, and
moved slowly to the eastern edge. Suddenly he stopped. Another step
would have been his last! He stood upon the crumbling edge of a
precipice. A landslip had taken place on the eastern flank, leaving
the gaunt ribs and fleshless bones of Lone Star mountain bare in the
moonlight. He understood now the strange rumble and reverberation he had
heard; he understood now the strange hush of bird and beast in brake and
thicket!

Although a single rapid glance convinced him that the slide had taken
place in an unfrequented part of the mountain, above an inaccessible
canyon, and reflection assured him his companions could not have reached
that distance when it took place, a feverish impulse led him to descend
a few rods in the track of the avalanche. The frequent recurrence of
outcrop and angle made this comparatively easy. Here he called aloud;
the feeble echo of his own voice seemed only a dull impertinence to the
significant silence. He turned to reascend; the furrowed flank of the
mountain before him lay full in the moonlight. To his excited fancy, a
dozen luminous star-like points in the rocky crevices started into
life as he faced them. Throwing his arm over the ledge above him, he
supported himself for a moment by what appeared to be a projection of
the solid rock. It trembled slightly. As he raised himself to its level,
his heart stopped beating. It was simply a fragment detached from the
outcrop, lying loosely on the ledge but upholding him by ITS OWN WEIGHT
ONLY. He examined it with trembling fingers; the encumbering soil fell
from its sides and left its smoothed and worn protuberances glistening
in the moonlight. It was virgin gold!

Looking back upon that moment afterwards, he remembered that he was not
dazed, dazzled, or startled. It did not come to him as a discovery or an
accident, a stroke of chance or a caprice of fortune. He saw it all in
that supreme moment; Nature had worked out their poor deduction. What
their feeble engines had essayed spasmodically and helplessly against
the curtain of soil that hid the treasure, the elements had achieved
with