pan he saw all of his hopes and all of his ambitions achieved.  He was rich!  In those gleaming particles he saw freedom for his mother and himself.  No longer a bitter struggle for existence in the city, no more pinching and striving and sacrifice that they might keep the little home in which his father had died!  When he turned toward Wabigoon his face was filled with the ecstasy of those visions.  He waded ashore and held his pan under the other’s eyes.

“Another nugget!” exclaimed Wabi excitedly.

“Yes.  But it isn’t the nugget.  It’s the—­” He moved the pan until the thousand little particles glittered and swam before the Indian’s eyes.  “It’s the dust.  The sand is full of gold!”

His voice trembled, his face was white.  From his crouching posture Wabi looked up at him, and they spoke no more words.

Mukoki looked, and was silent.  Then he went back to his dredging.  Little by little Rod washed down his pan.  Half an hour later he showed it again to Wabigoon.  The pebbles were gone.  What sand was left was heavy with the gleaming particles, and half buried in it all was the yellow nugget!  In Wabi’s pan there was no nugget but it was rich with the gleam of fine gold.

Mukoki had dredged a bushel of sand and gravel from the pool, and was upon his knees beside the heap which he had piled on the rock.  When Rod went to that rock for his third pan of dirt the old warrior made no sign that he had discovered anything.  The early gloom of afternoon was beginning to settle between the chasm walls, and at the end of his fourth pan Rod found that it was becoming so dark that he could no longer distinguish the yellow particles in the sand.  With the exception of one nugget he had found only fine gold.  With Wabi’s dust were three small nuggets.

When they ceased work Mukoki rose from beside the rock, chuckling, grimacing, and holding out his hand.  Wabi was the first to see, and his cry of astonishment drew Rod quickly to his side.  The hollow of the old warrior’s hand was filled with nuggets!  He turned them into Wabigoon’s hand, and the young Indian turned them into Rod’s, and as he felt the weight of the treasure he held Rod could no longer restrain the yell of exultation that had been held in all that afternoon.  Jumping high into the air and whooping at every other step he raced to the camp and soon had the small scale which they had brought with them from Wabinosh House.  The nuggets they had found that afternoon weighed full seven ounces, and the fine gold, after allowing the deduction of a third for sand, weighed a little more than eleven ounces.

“Eighteen ounces—­and a quarter!”

Rod gave the total in a voice tremulous with incredulity.

“Eighteen ounces—­at twenty dollars an ounce—­three hundred and sixty dollars!” he figured rapidly.  “By George—­” The prospect seemed too big for him, and he stopped.

“Less than half a day’s work,” added Wabi.  “We’re doing better than John Ball and the Frenchmen.  It means eighteen thousand dollars a month!”