pockets and held up in each hand a
lump of mineral earth. As he came toward them in that way, both hands
upheld, the wild fever light in his eyes, his thin body electrified with
a strange new vitality, to Steering, who saw all at once what it meant,
his movement was that of the last full strain of the miner's epic.
"Found! Found!" he repeated, as though the sound was blessed, and he
held up the rocks, as though the sight was heaven. When they reached
him, trembling by now themselves, they had to help him from his horse
and quiet and rest him by the roadside before he could tell his tale.
Waiting nervously, Bruce took the nuggets and regarded them; beautiful
specimens, one stratum opaque, and seaming on to that stratum another,
reddish and glinting, like the spiked fire of gold; and on that stratum
another, grey and silver-faceted.

"Pretty splendid," cried Steering, and sat down suddenly and weakly. It
was not to be forgotten that Old Bernique had emerged from the
bridle-path in the Canaan Tigmores.

"When did you make the find, Uncle Bernique?" he asked hoarsely.

"Thees minute," control was coming back to the old man, he raised his
head from Piney's shoulder and leaned toward Bruce--"only thees minute!
And for twenty year I have known that it must be here, the ore, lead and
zinc, in the gr-r-eat quantity! For twenty year! And just thees minute
have I found it!" At the wailing sound of time lost, life lost, in
Bernique's voice, long lines of ghostly, bent-backed miners, with
ghostly, unavailing picks and shovels, seemed to defile down the
bridle-path from the Canaan Tigmores in historic illustration, conjured
up by the hypnosis of the old man's words.

"The troub' has been," went on Bernique feverishly, "that we have not
looked for the ore in that place where the ore is----"

"That's always the troub'," muttered Piney. He had got his composure
back and he seemed now rather good-naturedly contemptuous. Piney's was
not a nature to accommodate itself to the exaltation of an ore find.

"The mother lode runs through the Canaan Tigmores," went on Bernique
hurriedly, "of that I am now convince', but it comes to the surface,--it
comes to the surface,--ah, God above! I expire with it,--let us go to
Choke Gulch, and I will show you where it comes to the surface!"

He was insistent, his breath had come back to him, and they let him have
his way, following him up the bridle-path into the long shadow of the
Canaan Tigmores.