George persisted.

“The reason we don’t get on is we try for nothing better than dust.  You know what you told me, that the gold was never created in dust, but in masses, like all metals; the dust is only a trifle that has been washed off the bulk.  Then you said we ought to track the gold-dust coarser and coarser till we traced the metal to its home in the great rocks.”

“Ay! ay!  I believe I used to talk so; but I am wiser now.  Look here, George, no doubt the gold was all in block when the world started, but how many million years ago was that?  This is my notion, George; at the beginning of the world the gold was all solid, at the end it is all to be dust; now which are we nearer, the end or the beginning?”

“Not knowing, can’t say, Tom.”

“Then I can, for his reverence told me.  We are fifty times nearer the end than the beginning, follows there is fifty times as much gold-dust in nature as solid gold.”

“What a head you ha’ got, Tom! but I can’t take it up so.  Seems to me this dust is like the grain that is shed from a ripe crop before it comes to the sickle.  Now if we could trace—­”

“How can you trace syrup to the lump when the lump is all turned to syrup?”

George held his peace—­shut up, but not convinced.

“Hallo! you two lucky ones,” cried a voice distant about thirty yards.  “Will you buy our hole, it is breaking our heart here.”

Robinson went up and found a large hole excavated to a great depth; it was yielding literally nothing, and this determined that paradoxical personage to buy it if it was cheap.  “What there is must be somewhere all in a lump.”

He offered ten pounds for it, which was eagerly snapped at.

“Well done, Gardiner,” said one of the band.  “We would have taken ten shillings for it,” explained he to Robinson.

Robinson paid the money, and let himself down into the hole with his spade.  He drove his spade into the clay, and the bottom of it just reached the rock; he looked up.  “I would have gone just one foot deeper before I gave in,” said he; he called George.  “Come, George, we can know our fate in ten minutes.”

They shoveled the clay away down to about one inch above the rock, and there in the white clay they found a little bit of gold as big as a pin’s head.

“We have done it this time,” cried Robinson, “shave a little more off, not too deep, and save the clay.”  This time a score of little nuggets came to view sticking in the clay; no need for washing, they picked them out with their knives.

The news soon spread, and a multitude buzzed round the hole and looked down on the men picking out peas and beans of pure gold with their knives.

Presently a voice cried, “Shame, give the men back their hole!”

“Gammon,” cried others, “they paid for a chance, and it turned out well; a bargain is a bargain.”  Gardiner and his mates looked sorrowfully down.  Robinson saw their faces and came out of the hole a moment.  He took Gardiner aside and whispered, “Jump into our hole like lightning, it is worth four pound a day.”