I confess, without shame, that I expected to find masses of silver lying all about the ground.  I expected to see it glittering in the sun on the mountain summits.  I said nothing about this, for some instinct told me that I might possibly have an exaggerated idea about it, and so if I betrayed my thought I might bring derision upon myself.  Yet I was as perfectly satisfied in my own mind as I could be of anything, that I was going to gather up, in a day or two, or at furthest a week or two, silver enough to make me satisfactorily wealthy—­and so my fancy was already busy with plans for spending this money.  The first opportunity that offered, I sauntered carelessly away from the cabin, keeping an eye on the other boys, and stopping and contemplating the sky when they seemed to be observing me; but as soon as the coast was manifestly clear, I fled away as guiltily as a thief might have done and never halted till I was far beyond sight and call.  Then I began my search with a feverish excitement that was brimful of expectation—­almost of certainty.  I crawled about the ground, seizing and examining bits of stone, blowing the dust from them or rubbing them on my clothes, and then peering at them with anxious hope.  Presently I found a bright fragment and my heart bounded!  I hid behind a boulder and polished it and scrutinized it with a nervous eagerness and a delight that was more pronounced than absolute certainty itself could have afforded.  The more I examined the fragment the more I was convinced that I had found the door to fortune.  I marked the spot and carried away my specimen.  Up and down the rugged mountain side I searched, with always increasing interest and always augmenting gratitude that I had come to Humboldt and come in time.  Of all the experiences of my life, this secret search among the hidden treasures of silver-land was the nearest to unmarred ecstasy.  It was a delirious revel.

By and by, in the bed of a shallow rivulet, I found a deposit of shining yellow scales, and my breath almost forsook me!  A gold mine, and in my simplicity I had been content with vulgar silver!  I was so excited that I half believed my overwrought imagination was deceiving me.  Then a fear came upon me that people might be observing me and would guess my secret.  Moved by this thought, I made a circuit of the place, and ascended a knoll to reconnoiter.  Solitude.  No creature was near.  Then I returned to my mine, fortifying myself against possible disappointment, but my fears were groundless—­the shining scales were still there.  I set about scooping them out, and for an hour I toiled down the windings of the stream and robbed its bed.  But at last the descending sun warned me to give up the quest, and I turned homeward laden with wealth.  As I walked along I could not help smiling at the thought of my being so excited over my fragment of silver when a nobler metal was almost under my nose.  In this little time the former had so fallen in my estimation that once or twice I was on the point of throwing it away.