ure the hotels
there serve the best of meals."

"O dear! now I am here, it doesn't look so easy--I mean to locate that
mine," sighed Roger.

"What, you're not going to give up so soon, are you, lad!" cried Tom
Dillon.

"Why, we ain't begun no search yit," added Abe Blower. "Time to git kind
o' tired arfter ye have been here a week or two an' nuthin' doin'."

To this none of the boys replied. But they could not help but think what
a dreary time it would be, searching among those rocks and that loose
dirt day after day, if the lost mine were not brought to light.

The day's exertions had tired all hands, and they slept soundly
throughout the night, with nothing coming to disturb them. When the boys
got up they found Abe Blower already at the campfire, preparing a
breakfast of his favorite flapjacks and bacon. He fried his big
flapjacks one at a time in a pan, and it was simply wonderful to the
boys how he would throw a cake in the air and catch it in the pan bottom
side up.

"It's the knack on't," said Tom Dillon, as he saw the lads watching the
feat performed. "I know some old miners kin keep two pans a-goin' that
way, and never miss a cake."

"I'd like to try it," said Phil.

"Not now--we ain't got no batter to waste," replied Abe Blower, with a
chuckle.

The morning meal at an end, the hunt for traces of the lost Landslide
Mine commenced in earnest. Dave and his chums had come dressed for the
work, and the whole party were provided with picks, shovels, crowbars,
axes, and a couple of gold-pans.

The whole of that day was spent on the mountainside, the various members
of the party separating from time to time and then coming together, to
relate their various experiences. The old miners had told the boys how
to search and what landmarks to look for, so that they did not seek
altogether blindly.

It was hard, hot work, for the sun poured down all the long day. And
added to that, water was scarce, for the nearest spring was well down
the mountainside, and even this had a bitter taste which rendered it far
from palatable.

"Well, nothing doing so far," said Roger, as they came together in the
evening.

"Never mind, we may have better luck to-morrow," returned Dave, as
cheerfully as he could.

Several days went by, including Sunday, and still they found nothing
that looked like a trace of the lost Landslide Mine. They had covered a
tract of rocks and dirt several hundred feet in width and all of half a
m