He thrust his shovel into the loose mass.  His eye caught a gleam of yellow.  He dropped the shovel and squatted suddenly on his heels.  As a farmer rubs the clinging earth from fresh-dug potatoes, so the man, a piece of rotten quartz held in both hands, rubbed the dirt away.

“Sufferin’ Sardanopolis!” he cried.  “Lumps an’ chunks of it!  Lumps an’ chunks of it!”

It was only half rock he held in his hand.  The other half was virgin gold.  He dropped it into his pan and examined another piece.  Little yellow was to be seen, but with his strong fingers he crumbled the rotten quartz away till both hands were filled with glowing yellow.  He rubbed the dirt away from fragment after fragment, tossing them into the gold-pan.  It was a treasure-hole.  So much had the quartz rotted away that there was less of it than there was of gold.  Now and again he found a piece to which no rock clung—­a piece that was all gold.  A chunk, where the pick had laid open the heart of the gold, glittered like a handful of yellow jewels, and he cocked his head at it and slowly turned it around and over to observe the rich play of the light upon it.

“Talk about yer Too Much Gold diggin’s!” the man snorted contemptuously.  “Why, this diggin’ ‘d make it look like thirty cents.  This diggin’ is All Gold.  An’ right here an’ now I name this yere canyon ’All Gold Canyon,’ b’ gosh!”

Still squatting on his heels, he continued examining the fragments and tossing them into the pan.  Suddenly there came to him a premonition of danger.  It seemed a shadow had fallen upon him.  But there was no shadow.  His heart had given a great jump up into his throat and was choking him.  Then his blood slowly chilled and he felt the sweat of his shirt cold against his flesh.

He did not spring up nor look around.  He did not move.  He was considering the nature of the premonition he had received, trying to locate the source of the mysterious force that had warned him, striving to sense the imperative presence of the unseen thing that threatened him.  There is an aura of things hostile, made manifest by messengers too refined for the senses to know; and this aura he felt, but knew not how he felt it.  His was the feeling as when a cloud passes over the sun.  It seemed that between him and life had passed something dark and smothering and menacing; a gloom, as it were, that swallowed up life and made for death—­his death.

Every force of his being impelled him to spring up and confront the unseen danger, but his soul dominated the panic, and he remained squatting on his heels, in his hands a chunk of gold.  He did not dare to look around, but he knew by now that there was something behind him and above him.  He made believe to be interested in the gold in his hand.  He examined it critically, turned it over and over, and rubbed the dirt from it.  And all the time he knew that something behind him was looking at the gold over his shoulder.