red yards from the water, and the inverted "V" was
assuming definite proportions. The width of the pay-dirt steadily
decreased, and the man extended in his mind's eye the sides of the "V"
to their meeting-place far up the hill. This was his goal, the apex of
the "V," and he panned many times to locate it.

"Just about two yards above that manzanita bush an' a yard to the
right," he finally concluded.

Then the temptation seized him. "As plain as the nose on your face,"
he said, as he abandoned his laborious cross-cutting and climbed to the
indicated apex. He filled a pan and carried it down the hill to wash. It
contained no trace of gold. He dug deep, and he dug shallow, filling
and washing a dozen pans, and was unrewarded even by the tiniest golden
speck. He was enraged at having yielded to the temptation, and cursed
himself blasphemously and pridelessly. Then he went down the hill and
took up the cross-cutting.

"Slow an' certain, Bill; slow an' certain," he crooned. "Short-cuts to
fortune ain't in your line, an' it's about time you know it. Get wise,
Bill; get wise. Slow an' certain's the only hand you can play; so go to
it, an' keep to it, too."

As the cross-cuts decreased, showing that the sides of the "V" were
converging, the depth of the "V" increased. The gold-trace was dipping
into the hill. It was only at thirty inches beneath the surface that
he could get colors in his pan. The dirt he found at twenty-five inches
from the surface, and at thirty-five inches, yielded barren pans. At the
base of the "V," by the water's edge, he had found the gold colors at
the grass roots. The higher he went up the hill, the deeper the gold
dipped.

To dig a hole three feet deep in order to get one test-pan was a task
of no mean magnitude; while between the man and the apex intervened
an untold number of such holes to be. "An' there's no tellin' how much
deeper it'll pitch," he sighed, in a moment's pause, while his fingers
soothed his aching back.

Feverish with desire, with aching back and stiffening muscles, with pick
and shovel gouging and mauling the soft brown earth, the man toiled up
the hill. Before him was the smooth slope, spangled with flowers and
made sweet with their breath. Behind him was devastation. It looked like
some terrible eruption breaking out on the smooth skin of the hill. His
slow progress was like that of a slug, befouling beauty with a monstrous
trail.

Though the dipping gold-trace increased