“I should think tramps would sleep here.”
“No fear of that,” he replied; “it’s too cold. Come inside!”
She followed him timorously, feeling the mystery of a vacant house, the unseen presence of former occupants.
“See!” Ben eagerly exclaimed, “there is where the boilers stood. And there,”—he pointed to where some twisted and rusty pipes loosely hung against the wall, like petrified serpents,—“is where the tanks stood in which they washed the gold. They washed it before melting it into bricks. Father has told me how the men used to stand knee-deep in it in the tanks and shovel it out, just as if they were shoveling coal.”
“They must have lost a lot.”
“It couldn’t be helped. And no one’s ever worked it over!”
“What was that!”
“Nothing but a loose shingle in the roof. Why, Beth, I didn’t know you were such a coward.”
“I’m not a coward; but I don’t like spooky places.” She looked apprehensively toward a dark corner.
“Spooky! Well, I hope some old miner’s ghost will kindly show me where to dig, that’s all. See how wide the cracks are in the floor of this shed,” he said, as he looked through an opening which led to an adjoining building. “There are thousands of dollars in the dirt under it—probably.”