turn to culminate in disaster, and in the meantime he utilized the false
footing itself for the momentary earth-contact necessary to carry him on
into safety. Where the earth sloped so steeply that it was impossible to
stand for a second upright, the man did not hesitate. His foot pressed
the impossible surface for but a fraction of the fatal second and gave
him the bound that carried him onward. Again, where even the fraction of
a second's footing was out of the question, he would swing his body
past by a moment's hand-grip on a jutting knob of rock, a crevice, or
a precariously rooted shrub. At last, with a wild leap and yell, he
exchanged the face of the wall for an earth-slide and finished the
descent in the midst of several tons of sliding earth and gravel.

His first pan of the morning washed out over two dollars in coarse gold.
It was from the centre of the "V." To either side the diminution in
the values of the pans was swift. His lines of crosscutting holes were
growing very short. The converging sides of the inverted "V" were only a
few yards apart. Their meeting-point was only a few yards above him. But
the pay-streak was dipping deeper and deeper into the earth. By early
afternoon he was sinking the test-holes five feet before the pans could
show the gold-trace.

For that matter, the gold-trace had become something more than a trace;
it was a placer mine in itself, and the man resolved to come back after
he had found the pocket and work over the ground. But the increasing
richness of the pans began to worry him. By late afternoon the worth of
the pans had grown to three and four dollars. The man scratched his head
perplexedly and looked a few feet up the hill at the manzanita bush that
marked approximately the apex of the "V." He nodded his head and said
oracularly:

"It's one o' two things, Bill; one o' two things. Either Mr. Pocket's
spilled himself all out an' down the hill, or else Mr. Pocket's that
damned rich you maybe won't be able to carry him all away with you. And
that'd be hell, wouldn't it, now?" He chuckled at contemplation of so
pleasant a dilemma.

Nightfall found him by the edge of the stream his eyes wrestling with
the gathering darkness over the washing of a five-dollar pan.

"Wisht I had an electric light to go on working." he said.

He found sleep difficult that night. Many times he composed himself and
closed his eyes for slumber to overtake him; but his blood pounded with
too str