"I didn't get anything this time," he announced, gaily. "But I don't care. I'm going out."
Terry's dirt had practically all flowed off. He picked out the bits of gravel—they were only pebbles and flakes of rock. He peered for yellow—yes, there it was! A glint mingled with a seam of coarse sand.
"I've got some!" he yelled. "See here? I've got some!"
Archie looked in.
"That's right. Let me finish it for you. I'll flirt that sand out."
So he did, with a dexterous twirl that sent part of the sand out and the rest against the sides, and left the heavier yellow in the middle.
"Reckon I've landed a little, myself," remarked Harry.
He had! Perhaps a trifle more than Terry, and the two pans together weren't enough to cover the point of the knife-blade with which they scraped the yellow up and carefully deposited it in Father Richards' old buckskin bag, brought for the purpose.
"Gold's worth $21 an ounce and that's about a pennyweight, I guess," encouraged Archie. "Ninety cents—but it's a beginning. Of course, where you dug I'd been digging before. You'll find a better place. You see, I've already taken out $80. So go ahead and keep panning, and I'll travel."
Archie had arranged to leave with a wagon outfit who were disgusted because they'd discovered nothing. The two new proprietors of the Golden Prize stopped operations long enough to bid him good-bye, and watch him trudge away, his pack on his back.