So Tom led the way to the shack, and did not see the departure of the law’s five officers.

Outside Reade carefully dropped the ore he had brought along and made a sign to his workmen to do the same.  Then the partners and the physician went inside.

Tom watched closely while the physician placed a thermometer in Harry’s mouth and felt his pulse.  Respiration was also counted, after which Dr. Scott produced a stethoscope and listened at Harry’s chest and back.  A little more, and the examination was completed.

“Gentlemen,” announced Dr. Scott, “you’ve brought me all this distance over the snow-crust to see a patient who is just about convalescent.  This young man may have some nourishment today, and by day after tomorrow he will be calling loudly for the cook.”

“What has been the trouble, doc?” Hazelton asked.

“Congestion of the right lung, my son, but the congestion has almost wholly disappeared.”

A mist came before Tom Reade’s eyes.  Now that his chum was out of danger Reade realized how severe on him the whole ordeal had been.

As soon as Tom found a chance he asked Dr. Scott: 

“Will a little excitement of the happiest kind hurt Hazelton any?”

“Just what kind of excitement?”

“We’ve had a disappointing mine that has turned over night into a bonanza.  I’ve a lot of the finest specimens outside.”

“Bring them in,” directed the physician.

Tom came in with an armful.

“Harry,” he called briskly, “we were right in thinking we had a rich vein.  The only trouble was that we were working eight or ten feet south of the real vein.  Look over these specimens.”

Tom ranged half a dozen on the top blanket.  When Harry’s glistening eyes had looked them all over, Tom produced other specimens of ore.  Dr. Scott examined them, too, with a critical eye.

“If you’ve got much of this stuff in your mine, Reade,” said the medical man, “you won’t need to work much longer.”

“Won’t need to work much longer?” gasped Tom Reade.  “Man alive, we don’t want to stop working.  When a man stops working he may as well consult the undertaker, for he’s practically dead anyway.  What we want gold for is so that we can go on working on a bigger scale than ever!  And now, Harry, the name for our mine has come to me.”

“What are you going to call it?” Hazelton asked.

“With your consent, and Ferrers’s, we’ll name it the Ambition Mine.  That’s just what the mine stands for with us, you know.”

“The best name in the world,” Harry declared.

“And now, young man,” said Dr. Scott, addressing Hazelton, “I want you to rest quietly while Tim Walsh sponges you off and the cook is busy making some thin gruel for you.  Reade, in order to get you out of here I’ll agree to go down in your mine with you.”

Dr. Scott proved more than an interested spectator when he reached the tunnel.  He possessed considerable knowledge of ores.