ople to examine so carefully
the outside of a strange letter, when the interior is at their disposal,
I feasted expectancy for a few minutes longer, telling myself that I
would carefully clear out all the sand before I tried to ascertain what
our treasure might be.

That was an exciting period, and I can picture it all even now: the
great cave, with its vast arch protruding right over the barrier, so
that we were toiling in the shadow of the huge vault, filled by day with
an ever-deepening golden mellow gloom--a gloom deepening into blackness
in the far depths; the trickling water, fresh from its mysterious source
in the great amphitheatre; our splashed and stained figures, toiling
together now in the pit we had dug; and the friendly scuffle which took
place when, the sand being well cleared out, Tom stooped, but only to be
arrested by my hand.

"No," I exclaimed, "let me, Tom!"

Then, with painfully throbbing heart I bent down, the blood seeming to
flush to my head so as to nearly blind me.

The next moment my fingers were groping about amongst the sand and
water.

"Be quick, Mas'r Harry, please, or I shall bust!" cried Tom, just as my
fingers encountered something hard.

With a cry of joy I rose up, to exhibit to the staring eyes of Tom Bulk
a glittering yellow stone.

"Gold, Tom--gold!" I exclaimed. "And here's more and more!"

I stooped down, to bring up two, three, four more lumps of the same
glittering yellow stone.

"No, 'tain't, Mas'r Harry," said Tom, gruffly, as he turned over one of
the fragments in his hand. "That ain't gold at all; that's what they
calls mica. I allers reclect the name, cause it's the same as one of
the prophets we used to read about at school. You might get plenty of
that in the rocks, without much trouble. It's just the same stuff as
some mates of mine once got out of a gravel pit at home, and they took
it to the watchmaker in the town, and they says to him, `What's that
gold worth?' they says. `Which gold?' he says. `Why, that,' they says.
`That's no more gold than you are,' he says; `that's mica.' And then
he told them that they might allers tell gold in a moment, by pulling
out a knife and trying to cut it, when if it was gold it would cut easy
like, just the same as a piece of lead. Try that, Mas'r Harry."

Snatching out my knife, I cut at one of the pieces of yellow stone, to
find it splinter under the keen edge of my blade.

"I'll swear, though, that the pynt