“Oh, we’ll have better ore, after a while,” Tom laughed.

“We’ve got to have,” grunted Hazelton, “or else we’ll have to walk all the way to our next job.”

“Just weigh the button, when it cools, and enter the weight on this page of the notebook,” directed Reade, then went for his own outdoor clothing.  “Have you been inspecting the dump as the stuff came up?”

“You’ll think me a fool,” cried Harry, “but I totally forgot it.”

“No matter,” Tom answered cheerily.  “I’ve been doing bench work so long in here that I need exercise.  I can run over all the stuff.”

After Reade had pulled on his overcoat and buttoned it he fastened a belt around his waist.  Through this he thrust a geologist’s hammer.

“Don’t go to sleep, Harry, old fellow, until you’ve cooled and weighed the button.  Then you may just as well take a nap as not.”

“There he goes,” muttered Hazelton, as the door closed briskly.  “Faith and enthusiasm are keeping Tom up.  He could work twenty-four hours and never feel it.  I wish I had some of his faith in this ridge.  I could work better for it.  Humph!  I’m afraid the ridge will never yield anything better than clay for brick-making!”

Harry did succeed in keeping his eyes open long enough to attend to the button.  That tiny object weighed, and the weight entered, Hazelton sat back in his chair.  Within a minute his eyes had closed and he was asleep.

Tom Reade, out at the ore dump, looked anything but sleepy.  With tireless energy he turned over the pieces of rock, pausing, now and then, to hold up one for inspection.

In reaching for a new piece his foot slipped.  Glancing down, to see just where the object was on which he had slipped, Tom suddenly became so interested that he dropped down on his knees in the snow.

It was a piece of rock that had come up in the first tubful.  At one point on the piece of rock there was a small, dull yellow glow.

Reads pawed the rock over in eager haste.  Then he drew the hammer from his belt, striking the rock sharply.  Piece after piece fell away until a solid yellow mass, streaked here and there faintly with quartz, lay in his hand.

“By the great Custer!” quivered Tom.

“What’s the matter, boss?” called one of the workmen.  “Got a sliver in your hand?”

“Have I?” retorted Tom joyously.  “Come here and take a look.”

“Haul away!” sounded Ferrers’s hoarse voice from below.

“Tell Jim to stop sending and come up a minute,” nodded Tom.

“Do you often see a finer lump than this?” Tom wanted to know as the two workmen came to him.  He held up a nugget.  Shaped somewhat like a horn-of-plenty, it weighed in the neighborhood of three ounces.

“Say, if there are many more like that down at the foot of the shaft this old hole-in-the-ridge will be a producer before another week is out!” answered one of the workmen.  “How much is it worth, boss?”