straightened himself a little, and his uncertain gaze grew steadier.

"There's one thing it can do," he went on. "It can show those who
remember him as he was that Grenfell the assayer and mineralogist can
still look round a mineral basin and tell just where the gold should
be."

Weston was no geologist, but he had seen enough of it to recognize
that prospecting is an art. Men certainly strike a vein or alluvial
placer by the merest chance now and then, but the trained man works
from indication to indication until, though he is sometimes mistaken,
he feels reasonably sure as to what waits to be uncovered by the
blasting charge or shovel. Grenfell's previous account of the
discovery had, however, not made quite plain the fact that he had
adopted the latter course.

"You told me you found the quartz by accident when you went to drink
at a creek," he said. "Any green hand might have done the same."

Grenfell laughed.

"The point is that I knew there was gold in the valley. I told you we
stayed there until the provisions had almost run out. I wanted
material proof--and I was satisfied when I found that little strip of
outcrop."

"A little strip! You said the lead ran right back to the hill and one
could follow it with an adit."

"It does, although I haven't seen it. The adit would dip a little. The
thing's quite certain."

Weston once more became sensible of the misgivings that not
infrequently had troubled him. His comrade, he believed, really had
been a famous mineralogist, but now he was a frail and broken man with
a half-muddled brain who could not be trusted to keep the fire going
beneath the pots while he cooked a meal. He was also a prey to maudlin
fancies, and it seemed quite possible that the mine was no more than a
creation of his disordered imagination. There were only two things
that partly warranted his belief in it-a fragment of quartz, and the
presence of the dead man on the lonely range, though Weston admitted
that there was a certain probability of Grenfell's having deluded
Verneille too. He had, however, pledged himself to look for the lead,
and that, at least, he meant to do. The search, in the meanwhile, was
sufficient to occupy him, as he was one who escaped a good many
troubles by confining his attention to the task in hand.

"Well," he said, dismissing the matter from his mind, "I'll turn out
at sun-up, and when we've had breakfast we'll go on again."

He lay down near the snapping fire a