rt had flowed out over the
edges. He did this again--picked out a number of pebbles and large
particles of dirt--swirled once more, and tilted the pan, almost empty,
for Charley to see.

Hurrah! Sure enough, there was a thin seam of yellow, lying in the
angle of sides and bottom! And breaking it, was a small irregular
particle, of blackish hue tinted with the yellow in spots. Charley's
eyes bulged. Gold! Was this the way they did it?

The man picked out the small lump, and turned it in his fingers.

"One little nugget. Worth probably twenty dollars," he remarked. "The
rest of the pans--these are two pans washed out--average about twelve
cents." Then, at sight of Charley's excited face, he laughed heartily.
"You look as though you had the gold fever, boy, and had it bad," he
said. "But these pans are nothing. They wouldn't sum up more than
four dollars a day--and nobody in California would work long for four
dollars a day. It's too low down on the river to pan out real wages.
I'm just amusing myself. Got a pan? Come in and try your luck. The
ground's free."

"I can't, now," stammered Charley. "I'm getting water for supper.
Maybe I can later, though. Will you be here after a while?"

"Oh, as like as not," answered the man, calmly scraping out the yellow
stuff with the point of his knife, and dropping it into the usual brown
buckskin sack--which, Charley noted, bulged a little at the bottom. "I
used to be a preacher; now I seem to be a miner. What's your name and
where'd you come from and where are you going, as the fashion of asking
questions is."

Charley briefly told him (for he liked this ex-preacher immensely), but
of course he didn't mention that they were on the trail of the Golden
West claim. He simply said that they were bound up the American. Then
he dipped his water and hastened back to the camp, where he found his
father waiting.

"I saw a man panning gold," he announced.

"Getting anything?" asked Mr. Grigsby, not at all excited.

"Yes. A nugget and a lot of dust besides. He said he'd help me pan,
if I'd come back after supper. Can I, dad?"

"Oh, I guess you can, if you have no chores," consented his father,
with a smile at Mr. Grigsby.

Charley had no idea that his father was such a cook. Mr. Adams went at
the matter in great shape--and even Mr. Grigsby, lying near, rewrapping
a place on the pack saddle, apparently found nothing to criticise.

Mr. Adams (and it looked o