y warmth
showered down through every particle of the air. I had felt some May
days like this back on our old farm. Somehow they were associated in my
mind with Sunday morning and the drawling, lazy clucking of hens. Only
here there were no hens, and if it was Sunday morning--which it might
have been--nobody knew it.

The majority of the citizens had not yet appeared, but a handful of the
poorer Chinese, and a sprinkling of others, crossed the Plaza. The doors
of the gambling places were all wide open to the air. Across the square
a number of small boys were throwing dust into the air. Johnny, with his
usual sympathy for children, naturally gravitated in their direction. He
returned after a few moments, his eyes wide.

"Do you know what they are doing?" he demanded.

We said politely that we did not.

"They are panning for gold."

"Well, what of it?" I asked, after a moment's pause; since Johnny seemed
to expect some astonishment. "Boys are imitative little monkeys."

"Yes, but they're getting it," insisted Johnny.

"What!" cried Talbot. "You're crazy. Panning gold--here in the streets.
It's absurd!"

"It's not absurd; come and see."

We crossed the Plaza. Two small Americans and a Mexican youth were
scooping the surface earth into the palms of their hands and blowing it
out again in a slantwise stream. When it was all gone, they examined
eagerly their hands. Four others working in partnership had spread a
small sheet. They threw their handfuls of earth into the air, all the
while fanning vigorously with their hats. The breeze thus engendered
puffed away the light dust, leaving only the heavier pieces to fall on
the canvas. Among these the urchins searched eagerly and carefully,
their heads close together. Every moment or so one of them would wet a
forefinger to pick up carefully a speck of something which he would then
transfer to an old buckskin sack.

As we approached, they looked up and nodded to Johnny in a friendly
fashion. They were eager, alert, precocious gamins, of the street type
and how they had come to California I could not tell you. Probably as
cabin boys of some of the hundreds of vessels in the harbour.

"What are you getting, boys?" asked Talbot after a moment.

"Gold, of course," answered one of them.

"Let's see it."

The boy with the buckskin sack held it open for our inspection, but did
not relax his grip on it. The bottom of the bag was thickly gilded with
light glittering yellow