“Mighty little’s been found yet, worse luck. It almost always occurs in veins with a lot of lead and other stuff, and everywhere I have ever seen it, it’s alongside a porphyry dyke.”
This last remark made Len’s heart jump, but he showed no excitement. In a well-controlled voice he remarked that he wished they had a magnifying glass so that the professor might point out to them more effectively the peculiarities of the mineral, which he was turning over in his fingers.
“I’ve a good one,” the old miner answered.
“I’ll get it,” and he stepped back into the cabin.
Instantly Len drew from his pocket three fragments of the brown rock taken from the deepest part of the Last Chance lode, and slipped the Denver specimens out of sight. He thought the change would not be noticed; certainly there was no difference between the former and latter specimens discernible to a careless eye, and if they deceived this expert, he might feel sure that his pieces of ore were as truly tellurium as were the others.
The professor came out wiping the lenses of a small but powerful magnifier upon the lining of his old coat. Taking one of the changed specimens unsuspectingly from Len’s hand, he began to scrutinize it very carefully under the microscope.
“By George,” he exclaimed, “that’s a bully specimen! I wonder where Pete,”—his Denver acquaintance,—“got it. I never saw anything richer in tellurides.”
Then he took the other pieces and examined those in the same way. “Guess the glass must ’a’ been dusty when I looked at ’em before,” he muttered, as he handed them and the magnifier to Len that he might study them; and then he went on to say what were the particles to be seen in the rusty rock which denoted the presence of telluride of gold, and that certain other black spots, filling small cavities, seemed to be carbonate of lead, which might contain silver.
“Well,” he remarked, as the boys finished their examination, “If Pete’s got a mine of that stuff he ought to be a rich man pretty soon. It’ll assay mighty high, or I don’t know coals from chalk.”
To re-exchange the specimens and give the professor his own back again, was a matter of no great difficulty while they talked, and as both the lads were eager to get away by themselves and sing a song over their tokens of success, it was not long before they took their leave,—the warmth of that proceeding causing the old miner considerable astonishment.