“I’ll tote for you till daylight, if the good streak only holds out,” laughed Jennison, with glowing eyes.

“Come softly into the shack when you do come,” Tom directed.  “I’m going to put Mr. Hazelton to bed, and I don’t want any one to wake him.  When I play out tonight he’ll have to be fresh enough to take my place at the assay bench and furnace.”

Softly Tom entered their shack.

Harry lay fast asleep, breathing heavily.

“This won’t do, old fellow,” spoke Tom gently, shaking his chum’s shoulder.  “No; don’t wake up.  Just get into bed.  I may want to turn in later, and, when I do, I may have some work left over that I’ll want you to do.”

“Anything up?” asked Harry drowsily.

“I’m going to be busy for a while, and then I want you to be,” Tom answered.

He half pushed his chum toward the narrow bunk against the wall.  Drowsy Hazelton needed no urging, but stretched himself out in his bunk.

Tom drew the blankets up over him, adding: 

“Don’t stir until I call you.”

Hour after hour the men below in the mine sent up tub-lots of rock.  Jim spent half of his time above ground, the rest below.  Jennison was busy bringing the best samples in to Reade, but he walked so softly that Harry slept peacefully on.

Still the yellow rock came up.  None of it looked like the richest sort of ore, but it was good gold-bearing stuff, none the less.  Tom made many assays.  It was seven in the evening ere the excited miners would agree to knock off work for the day.

Then Tom quit and had supper with them.  There was excitement in the air, but Tom still counseled patience.

“We’ll know more in a week than we do now,” he urged.

“That’s all right, Mr. Reade,” laughed Tim Walsh.  “As long as you were hopeful we didn’t bring up enough yellow to pay for the dynamite we used in blasting.  Now, boss, you’re begging us not to be hopeful, and the luck is changing.”

“I’m not kicking against hopefulness,” Tom objected, smiling.  “All I ask of you men is not to spend the whole year’s profits from the mine before we get even one load fit to haul to the smelter.”

“We’ve got the ore dump started,” retorted Jennison, “and we don’t have to haul stuff to the smelter.  Boss, you can raise money enough without hauling a single load before spring.”

“How?” Tom wanted to know.

“The banks at Dugout will lend you a small fraction of the value of the dump as soon as they’re satisfied that it has any value,” Jim Ferrers explained.

“I didn’t know that,” Tom admitted.

“Now you can understand why the boys are excited tonight.  They know you’ll outfit the camp liberally enough if the yellow streak holds out.”

“Outfit the camp liberally?” repeated Tom.  “I’ll go just as far in that line as my partners will stand for.”

“We want a bang-up Christmas dinner, you see, boss,” Tim Walsh explained.  “We wouldn’t have spoken of it if this streak hadn’t panned today.  Now, we know we’re going to have doings on the ridge this winter.”