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"Well, go on and finish your meal in this plain fireplace of ours,

Bill It has done us very well I think I'll go down to the sluice a

while"

Banion rose and left the cabin, stooping at the low door Moodily he

walked along the side of the steep ravine to which the little structure

clung Below him lay the ripped-open slope where the little streaain lay the bared bed of the exploited water

course, floored with bowlders set in deep gravel, at ti under and across the gravel stretches; the bed

rock, ages old, holding in its hidden fingers the rich secrets of

immemorial time

Here he and his partner had in a few months of strenuous labor taken

from the narrow and unimportant rivulet more wealth than most could save

in a lifetime of patient and thrifty toil Yes, fortune had been kind

And it all had been so easy, so si, so

matter-of-fact! The hillside now looked like any other hillside,

innocent as a wo how h he was, he was a rich man

He cli under

his feet, until he stood on the bared floor of the bed rock which had