opposite bank, Angela stopped and stared at the newly excavated hole.

"Someone has been digging here!" she exclaimed.

"Me," said Jim. "This morning."

"To find what we always find--muck?"

"I didn't wash it. Chips turned up and was in trouble----"

She stared at him in amazement.

"You dug all that and didn't wash it?"

"What's the use? It didn't look good to me."

She shrugged her shoulders and slipped her pack down.

"What's wrong?" he queried.

"Nothing. I'm going to wash it."

"Better not waste time----"

"Waste time! A few minutes won't make any difference, considering we've
wasted a year already."

He turned from her with a sigh. She called it wasted, but it hadn't been
wasted to him. Now that the end of the journey was nigh, he found a
strange joy in looking back over the past. Every little incident of their
strange pilgrimage seemed to have garnered gold about it. Compared to the
lonely, forbidding future, the past was like a paradise, to live for ever
in his heart and mind. He had missed much, but he had gained
something--passionate, all-consuming love for a woman. Though she gave
little in return, it mattered not. The finest type of love does not make
demands upon that which it worships. He could keep her still by the same
means as he had retained her all along, but his mode of thought had
changed somewhat. A deeper love had grown out of the old tempestuous,
tyrannous thing. It were better to give than to receive.

He watched her shaking the washing-pan in the water, her clear-cut face
intent on the task at hand, and her hair glinting in the sunshine. She
came splashing through the water with the pan in her hands.

"Look--something glitters there!"

He took it from her and gave one glance at the contents--a small heap of
black and yellow.

Then he laughed loudly.

"Then it isn't----" she commenced.

He ceased to laugh as he probed the dust in the pan. The whole thing was
so miraculous to him, he could scarcely find expression.

"You've found it, Angela," he said. "It's gold--real high-grade ore.
You've dealt a straight flush at the last hand."

"But it doesn't look like gold!"

"That black stuff ain't gold, it's magnetic ore. Gee, wash some more
dirt. This looks like Eldorado!"

He flung down his pack and started shoveling out more gravel from the
hole. In the meantime Angela washed the pay-dirt and placed the residue in
a handkerchief. Excitement grew as the work went forward.