e, spelling
each other in shoveling out the debris. The two shots driven in
opposite corners had deepened the shaft over two feet. When the new
bottom of the hole was uncovered we nearly had a return of the
frenzies. The discolored line of the vein had widened to four inches
or more, and the last of the broken rock shoveled out was freely mixed
with fragments of the bluish-brown gangue-matter.

A hasty estimate assured us that we had a sufficient quantity of the
lode matter for a trial assay, and we spent the better part of the
afternoon picking out pieces of the ore on the small dump and in
chipping more of them from the exposed face of the seam. It was
arranged that one of us should take the samples to town after dark, for
the sake of secrecy, and we put in what daylight there was left after
our sample was prepared drilling another set of holes--though we did
not fire them.

Leaving Gifford to stand guard over what now might be something well
worth guarding, I made my way down the mountain after supper with the
two small sacks of selected samples. True to his promise, I found
Barrett already established in a rather cheap boarding-house. He was
surprised to see me so soon, and more than surprised when I showed him
the specimens of bluish rock.

"Say--by George!" he exclaimed; "that sure does look like the real
stuff, Jimmie; though of course you can't tell. Have you roasted any
of it?"

I was so green a miner at that time that I did not know what "roasting"
meant. Barrett had a tiny coal-stove in his room with a bit of fire in
it. Even the June nights are sometimes chilly at the Cripple Creek
altitude. Selecting a bit of the stone he put it upon the fire-shovel
among the coals and while it was heating listened to my recounting of
the short and exciting story of the "find."

When the piece of bluish stone had been roasted and cooled we did not
need the magnifying-glass. It was covered with a dew of fine pin-point
yellow globules. Barrett went up in the air as if his chair had
exploded under him. "My God, Jimmie!" he choked, "it's--it's a
_bonanza_!"

The next step was to have authoritative assays made, and together we
took the two small sacks of ore to the sampling works, which, at that
time, were running day and night. We waited in the office while the
tests were being made. The result, which came to us well past
midnight, was enough to upset the equanimity of a wooden Indian. Some
of the selec