oss was running again for the first time in
years; and, even as he looked down on the red roof, the whistle in the
engine-house gave a series of cheerful toots in salute of the fact.

Down on the flat in front of the long structure which held, in its
batteries, almost two-score stamps, a tall figure came out, and looked
around as if seeking him, and then, casting its eyes upward, beheld
him, and lifted a battered hat and swung it overhead. It was Bill,
rejoicing in his work.

A car of ore slid along the tramway, with the carboy dangling one leg
over the back end while steadying himself by the controller, as if he
had been thus occupied for years. Dick tore his hat off, threw it in
the air, and shouted, and raced down the hill. From now on it must be
work; unless they met with great success--then--he dared not stop to
think of what then.

He hastened on down to the mill and entered the door. Everything
about it, from the dumping of the cars sixty feet above, the wrench
of the crushers breaking the ore into smaller fragments, the clash of
the screens as it came on down to the stamps, and their terrific
"jiggety-jig-jig," roared, throbbed, and trembled. Every timber in
the structure seemed to keep pace with that resistless shaking as the
tables slid to and fro, dripping from the water percolating at
their heads, to distribute the fine silt of crushed, muddy ore evenly
over the plates in the steady downward slant. Already the bright
plates of copper, coated with quicksilver, were catching, retaining,
amalgamating the gold.

"The venners need a little more slant, don't you think?" bellowed his
partner, with his hands cupped and held close against Dick's ear in
the effort to make himself heard in that pandemonium where millmen
worked the shift through without attempting to speak.

In the critical calculation of the professional miner, Dick forgot all
other affairs, and leaned down to see the run of water. He nodded his
head, beckoned to the mill boss, and by well-known signs indicated his
wish. He scrambled above and studied the pulp, slipping it through his
fingers and feeling its fineness, and speculating whether or not they
would be troubled with any solution of lead that would render the
milling difficult and slime the plates so that the gold would escape
to go roistering down the creek with waste water. It did feel very
slippery, and he was reassured. He was eager to get to the assay-house
and make his first assay