the size of a man's two fists. He was lifting the bag to
dump its contents out upon the table when suddenly Howard pushed by
Sanchia and snatched the thing from Longstreet's hands. Longstreet
stared at him in astonishment; Sanchia caught at his coat.

'Just a minute,' said Howard hastily. Even Helen wondered as he turned
and bolted out through the door and sped up the trail toward the
spring. Longstreet looked from the departing figure to his daughter
and then to Sanchia, frankly bewildered. Then all went to the door.
In a moment, Howard returned, the bag hanging limp over his arm, his
two hands filled with the fragments of rock which glistened in the
lamp-light.

'I washed them off,' he said lightly. 'If there really is gold here we
can see it better with all the loose dirt off, can't we?' He put them
down on the table and stood back, watching Sanchia keenly.

The fine restraint which, in her many encounters with the unexpected,
Sanchia had been trained so long and so well to maintain, was gone now
in a flash. Her eyes shone; a rich colour flooded her face; she could
not stop her involuntary action until she had literally thrown herself
upon the bits of quartz, snatching them up. For they were streaked and
seamed and pitted with gold, such ore as she had never seen. The
avarice gleaming in her eyes for that one instant during which she was
thrown off her guard was akin to a light of madness.

But she had herself in hand immediately; she was as one who had slipped
slightly upon a polished floor but had caught herself gracefully from
falling. She thrust the rock into Longstreet's hands; she smiled upon
him; she made use of her old familiar gesture of laying her hand upon
his arm, as she hardly more than whispered:

'Dear friend--and wonderful man--I am glad for your sake, so
tremendously glad. For now you have vindicated yourself before the
world. Now you have shown them all'--and in her flashing glance
Sanchia managed to include both Alan and Helen sweepingly with an
invisible horde whose bitter tongues had been as so many dogs yelping
at the excellent Longstreet's heels--'now you have shown them all that
you are the man I have always contended you were.' She crowded her
smile fuller of what she sought to convey than even she had ever risked
before as she murmured at the end, her tones dropping away like dying
music: 'This is a happy hour in the life of Sanchia Murray!'

'There's truth there, if nowh