“Where’d you git this, Miss?” he asked Ruth.
“Well, it isn’t two miles from here,” said the girl of the Red Mill. “What do you think of it?”
“I think this here is a placer diggin’s,” said Peters, slowly. “But it’s sure that wherever there’s placer there must be a rock-vein where the gold washed off, or was ground off, ages and ages ago. D’you understand?”
“Yes!” cried Helen, breathlessly.
“Oh! suppose we have found gold!” murmured Jennie, quite as excited as Helen.
“The rock-vein ain’t never been found around here,” said Flapjack. “I know, for I’ve hunted it myself. Both banks of the crick, up an’ down, have been s’arched——”
“But suppose this was found a good way from the stream?”
“Mebbe so,” said the old prospector. “The crick might ha’ shifted its bed a dozen times since the glacier age. We don’t know.”
“But how shall we find out if this rock is any good?” asked Jennie, eagerly.
“Mr. Hammond’s goin’ to send a man out to Handy Gulch with mail to-morrow,” said the prospector. “He’ll send these samples to the assayer there. He’ll send back word whether it’s good for anything or not. But I tell you right now, ladies. If I’m any jedge at all, that ore’ll assay a hundred an’ fifty dollars to the ton—or nothin’.”