ain't goin' to hit the
pie with your pick?"

"Wal, not till Christmas, anyway, Keno, and only then in case we've
busted all the knives and saws trying to git it apart," said Jim,
reassuringly.

"Would you keep it, sure, and feed it to 'em all the same?" inquired
Keno, forlornly, eager for a ray of hope.

"I certainly would," replied the miner. "They won't know the diff
between a lemon-pie and a can of tomatoes. So I guess I'll go and git
my pick. It may come on to snow, and then I couldn't find it till the
spring."

Without the slightest intention of working any more, Jim sauntered back
to the place where the pick was lying on the hill and took it up. By
chance he thought of the ledge of quartz above in the rain-sluiced
channel.

"Might as well hit her a lick," he drawled to himself, and climbing to
the spot he drove the point of his implement into a crevice of the rock
and broke away a piece of two or three pounds in weight. This he took
in his big, red hands, which were numbing in the cold.

For a moment he looked at the fragment of quartz with unbelieving eyes.
He wet it with his tongue. Then a something that answered in Jim to
excitement pumped from his heart abruptly.

The rock was flecked all through with tiny specks of metal that the
miner knew unerringly.

It was gold.

CHAPTER XII

THE MAKING OF A CHRISTMAS-TREE

Despite the snow that fell that night, despite the near approach of
Christmas, old Jim's discovery aroused a great excitement in the camp.
That very evening the news was known throughout all Borealis, and all
next day, in the driving storm, the hill was visited, the ledge was
viewed, and the topic was discussed at length in all its amazing
features.

Teamsters, miners, loiterers--all, even including the gambler--came to
pay their homage at the hiding-place of one of Mammon's family. All
the mountain-side was taken up in claims. The calmest man in all the
hills was Jim himself.

Parky made him an offer without the slightest hesitation.

"I'll square off your bill at the store," he said, "and give you a
hundred dollars' worth of grub for the claim and prospect just as she
stands."

"Not to-day," old Jim replied. "I never do no swapping at the other's
feller's terms when I'm busy. We've got to get ready for Christmas,
and you don't look to me like Santy Claus hunting 'round for lovely
things to do."

"Anyway, I'll send up a lot of grub," declared the gambler, with