particles.

"It looks like gold," said I, incredulously.

"It _is_ gold," replied the boy with some impatience. "Anyway, it
buys things."

We looked at each other.

"Gold diggings right in the streets of San Francisco," murmured Yank.

"I should think you'd find it easier later in the day when the wind came
up?" suggested Talbot.

"Of course; and let some other kids jump our claim while we were
waiting," grunted one of the busy miners.

"How much do you get out of it?"

"Good days we make as high as three or four dollars."

"I'm afraid the diggings are hardly rich enough to tempt us," observed
Talbot; "but isn't that the most extraordinary performance! I'd no
notion----"

We returned slowly to the hotel, marvelling. Yesterday we had been
laughing at the gullibility of one of our fellow-travellers who had
believed the tale of a wily ship's agent to the effect that it was
possible to live aboard the ship and do the mining within reach ashore
at odd hours of daylight! Now that tale did not sound so wild; although
of course we realized that the gold must occur in very small quantities.
Otherwise somebody beside small boys would be at it. As a matter of
fact, though we did not find it out until very much later, the soil of
San Francisco is not auriferous at all. The boys were engaged in working
the morning's sweepings from the bars and gambling houses which the
lavish and reckless handling of gold had liberally impregnated. In some
of the mining towns nearer the source of supply I have known of from one
hundred to three hundred dollars a month being thus "blown" from the
sweepings of a bar.

We ate a frugal breakfast and separated on the agreed business of the
day. Yank started for the water front to make inquiries as to ways of
getting to the mines; Talbot set off at a businesslike pace for the
hotel as though he knew fully what he was about; Johnny wandered rather
aimlessly to the east; and I as aimlessly to the west.

It took me just one hour to discover that I could get all of any kind of
work that any dozen men could do, and at wages so high that at first I
had to ask over and over again to make sure I had heard aright. Only
none of them would bring me in two hundred and twenty dollars by
evening. The further I looked into that proposition, the more absurd, of
course, I saw it to be. I could earn from twenty to fifty dollars by
plain day-labour at some jobs; or I could get fabulous salaries by the
month