Even in his busiest
hours memories of Barclay and the woman obtruded themselves.

It was after dark when he had fired the hole a second time and returned
to his cabin. He had not reached bed-rock and this fact irritated
him--he was growing very irritable, it seemed. Lighting his pipe of rank
"sheep-dip" tobacco when the supper-dishes were finally cleaned and the
dogs fed, he once more prepared for the profitless process of panning.
But he noticed that this sample of gravel was different to any he had
yet found, being of a peculiar ashen color. He felt it with practised
fingers and discovered it to be gritty and full of sediment.

"Feels good," he said, aloud, "but I'll bet it's barren."

He had panned so many samples that all eagerness, all curiosity as to
the outcome, had long since disappeared, therefore his movements were
purely perfunctory as he dissolved the clay lumps and washed the gravels
down. He paused half-way through the operation to dry his hands and
relight his pipe, then fell to thinking of Barclay and the woman once
more, and remained so for a long time. When he resumed his task it was
with glazed, unseeing eyes. He was about to dump the last dregs
carelessly when something just slipping over the edge of the pan caught
his eye and caused him to tilt the receptacle abruptly.

The breath whistling in his throat roused the dogs. McGill closed his
eyes for an instant, then reached unsteadily for the candle. A movement
of his wrist ran the water across the pan bottom and spread the black
sand thinly. Instantly there leaped out against the black metal a heap
of bright, clean, yellow particles which lay as if glued together.

"Coarse gold! Coarse gold!" he whispered, then cursed in the weak,
meaningless manner of men under great excitement. Not trusting himself
to hold the pan, he set it upon the table, but without removing his eyes
from it. When his nerves had steadied he ran the prospect down, all the
time muttering in his beard. He dried it over the fire, blew the iron
sand free with his breath, then pushed the particles into a heap,
striving to estimate their value.

"There's half an ounce," he said, finally. "Eight dollars a pan! God!
that's big! Big! It's another Klondike." He rose and ran bareheaded out
into the night, followed by the dogs, then stood staring at the smoke as
it ascended vertically above his shaft, like a giant night-growing plant
of some kind. He was tempted to descend the ladder a