y the erosion of
winter torrents. It was apparently as wild and secluded as the forest
spring. "Nobody ever came here," said the girl hurriedly, "after dad
sunk the well at the house."

One or two pools still remained in the Run from the last season's flow,
water enough to wash out several pans of dirt.

Selecting a spot where the white quartz was visible, Fleming attacked
the bank with the pick. After one or two blows it began to yield and
crumble away at his feet. He washed out a panful perfunctorily, more
intent on the girl than his work; she, eager, alert, and breathless,
had changed places with him, and become the anxious prospector! But the
result was the same. He threw away the pan with a laugh, to take her
little hand! But she whispered, "Try again."

He attacked the bank once more with such energy that a great part of
it caved and fell, filling the pan and even burying the shovel in the
debris. He unearthed the latter while Tinka was struggling to get out
the pan.

"The mean thing is stuck and won't move," she said pettishly. "I think
it's broken now, too, just like ours."

Fleming came laughingly forward, and, putting one arm around the girl's
waist, attempted to assist her with the other. The pan was immovable,
and, indeed, seemed to be broken and bent. Suddenly he uttered an
exclamation and began hurriedly to brush away the dirt and throw the
soil out of the pan.

In another moment he had revealed a fragment of decomposed quartz, like
discolored honeycombed cheese, half filling the pan. But on its side,
where the pick had struck it glancingly, there was a yellow streak
like a ray of sunshine! And as he strove to lift it he felt in that
unmistakable omnipotency of weight that it was seamed and celled with
gold.

The news of Mr. Fleming's engagement, two weeks later, to the daughter
of the recluse religious hunter who had made a big strike at Lone Run,
excited some skeptical discussion, even among the honest congratulations
of his partners.

"That's a mighty queer story how Jack got that girl sweet on him just by
borrowin' a prospectin' pan of her," said Faulkner, between the whiffs
of his pipe under the trees. "You and me might have borrowed a hundred
prospectin' pans and never got even a drink thrown in. Then to think
of that old preachin' coon-hunter hevin' to give in and pass his strike
over to his daughter's feller, jest because he had scruples about gold
diggin' himself. He'd hev booted you