“Don’t, I say.”

“Here’s Austin,” whispered the Colonel.

The Silesian philosopher stood in his “gum-boots” in the puddling-box as on a rostrum; but silent now, as ever, when Scowl Austin was in sight.  With the great sluice-fork, the philosopher took up, washed, and threw out the few remaining big stones that they might not clog the narrow boxes below.

Seymour had so regulated the stream that, in place of the gush and foam of a few minutes before, there was now only a scant and gently falling veil of water playing over the bright gravel caught in the riffle-lined bottoms of the boxes.

As the Boy got up and reached for his stick, Austin stood there saying, to nobody in particular, that he’d just been over to No. 29, where they were trying a new-fangled riffle.

“Don’t your riffles do the trick all right?” asked the Boy.

“If you’re in any doubt, come and see,” he said.

They stood together, leaning over the sluice, looking in at one of the things human industry has failed to disfigure, nearly as beautiful to-day as long ago on Pactolus’ banks when Lydian shepherds, with great stones, fastened fleeces in the river that they might catch and gather for King Croesus the golden sands of Tmolus.  Improving, not in beauty, but economy, quite in the modern spirit, the Greeks themselves discovered that they lost less gold if they led the stream through fleece-lined water-troughs—­and beyond this device of those early placer-miners we have not progressed so far but that, in every long, narrow sluice-box in the world to-day, you may see a Lydian water-trough with a riffle in the bottom for a golden fleece.

The rich Klondyker and the poor one stood together looking in at the water, still low, still slipping softly over polished pebbles, catching at the sunlight, winking, dimpling, glorifying flint and jasper, agate and obsidian, dazzling the uncommercial eye to blind forgetfulness of the magic substance underneath.

Austin gathered up, one by one, a handful of the shining stones, and tossed them out.  Then, bending down, “See?”

There, under where the stones had been, neatly caught in the lattice of the riffle, lying thick and packed by the water action, a heavy ridge of black and yellow—­magnetic sand and gold.

“Riffles out!” called Seymour, and the men, who had been extracting the rusty nails that held them firm, lifted out from the bottom of each box a wooden lattice, soused it gently in the water, and laid it on the bank.

The Boy had turned away again, but stood an instant noticing how the sun caught at the countless particles of gold still clinging to the wood; for this was one of the old riffles, frayed by the action of much water and the fret of many stones.  Soon it would have to be burned, and out of its ashes the careful Austin would gather up with mercury all those million points of light.