He was too deeply engaged to notice more than that somebody had entered the cabin.  They stood at his shoulder and looked on.  He imparted to the pan a deft circular motion, pausing once or twice to rake out the larger particles of gravel with his fingers.  The water was muddy, and, with the pan buried in it, they could see nothing of its contents.  Suddenly he lifted the pan clear and sent the water out of it with a flirt.  A mass of yellow, like butter in a churn, showed across the bottom.

Hootchinoo Bill swallowed.  Never in his life had he dreamed of so rich a test-pan.

“Kind of thick, my friend,” he said huskily.  “How much might you reckon that-all to be?”

Ans Handerson did not look up as he replied, “Ay tank fafty ounces.”

“You must be scrumptious rich, then, eh?”

Still Ans Handerson kept his head down, absorbed in putting in the fine touches which wash out the last particles of dross, though he answered, “Ay tank Ay ban wort’ five hundred t’ousand dollar.”

“Gosh!” said Hootchinoo Bill, and he said it reverently.

“Yes, Bill, gosh!” said Kink Mitchell; and they went out softly and closed the door.

THE ONE THOUSAND DOZEN

David Rasmunsen was a hustler, and, like many a greater man, a man of the one idea.  Wherefore, when the clarion call of the North rang on his ear, he conceived an adventure in eggs and bent all his energy to its achievement.  He figured briefly and to the point, and the adventure became iridescent-hued, splendid.  That eggs would sell at Dawson for five dollars a dozen was a safe working premise.  Whence it was incontrovertible that one thousand dozen would bring, in the Golden Metropolis, five thousand dollars.

On the other hand, expense was to be considered, and he considered it well, for he was a careful man, keenly practical, with a hard head and a heart that imagination never warmed.  At fifteen cents a dozen, the initial cost of his thousand dozen would be one hundred and fifty dollars, a mere bagatelle in face of the enormous profit.  And suppose, just suppose, to be wildly extravagant for once, that transportation for himself and eggs should run up eight hundred and fifty more; he would still have four thousand clear cash and clean when the last egg was disposed of and the last dust had rippled into his sack.

“You see, Alma,”—­he figured it over with his wife, the cosy dining-room submerged in a sea of maps, government surveys, guide-books, and Alaskan itineraries,—­“you see, expenses don’t really begin till you make Dyea—­fifty dollars’ll cover it with a first-class passage thrown in.  Now from Dyea to Lake Linderman, Indian packers take your goods over for twelve cents a pound, twelve dollars a hundred, or one hundred and twenty dollars a thousand.  Say I have fifteen hundred pounds, it’ll cost one hundred and eighty dollars—­call it two hundred and be safe.  I am creditably informed by a Klondiker just come out that I can buy a boat for three hundred.  But the same man says I’m sure to get a couple of passengers for one hundred and fifty each, which will give me the boat for nothing, and, further, they can help me manage it.  And . . . that’s all; I put my eggs ashore from the boat at Dawson.  Now let me see how much is that?”