and the gray faces of “rock-houses” for signs of the black diamonds.  He had learned to watch the beds of little creeks for the shining tell-tale black bits, and even the tiny mouths of crawfish holes, on the lips of which they sometimes lay.  And the biggest treasure in the hills little Jason had found himself; for only on the last day before the rock-pecker had gone away, the two had found signs of another vein, and the geologist had given his own pick to the boy and told him to dig, while he was gone, for himself.  And Jason had dug.  He was slipping now up the tiny branch, and where the stream trickled down the face of a water-worn perpendicular rock the boy stopped, leaned his rifle against a tree, and stepped aside into the bushes.  A moment later he reappeared with a small pick in his hand, climbed up over a mound of loose rocks and loose earth, ten feet around the rock, and entered the narrow mouth of a deep, freshly dug ditch.  Ten feet farther on he was halted by a tall black column solidly wedged in the narrow passage, at the base of which was a bench of yellow dirt extending not more than two feet from the foot of the column and above the floor of the ditch.  There had been mighty operations going on in that secret passage; the toil for one boy and one tool had been prodigious and his work was not yet quite done.  Lifting the pick above his head, the boy sank it into that yellow pedestal with savage energy, raking the loose earth behind him with hands and feet.  The sunlight caught the top of the black column above his head and dropped shining inch by inch, but on he worked tirelessly.  The yellow bench disappeared and the heap of dirt behind him was piled high as his head, but the black column bored on downward as though bound for the very bowels of the earth, and only when the bench vanished to the level of the ditch’s floor did the lad send his pick deep into a new layer and lean back to rest even for a moment.  A few deep breaths, the brushing of one forearm and then the other across his forehead and cheeks, and again he grasped the tool.  This time it came out hard, bringing out with its point particles of grayish-black earth, and the boy gave a low, shrill yell.  It was a bed of clay that he had struck—­the bed on which, as the geologist had told him, the massive layers of coal had slept so long.  In a few minutes he had skimmed a yellow inch or two more to the dingy floor of the clay bed, and had driven his pick under the very edge of the black bulk towering above him.

His work was done, and no buccaneer ever gloated more over hidden treasure than Jason over the prize discovered by him and known of nobody else in the world.  He raised his head and looked up the shimmering black face of his find.  He took up his pick again and notched foot-holes in each side of the yellow ditch.  He marked his own height on the face of the column, and, climbing up along it, measured his full length again, and yet with outstretched arm he could barely