“But the other fact remains that we’re having one bully good time. Purdy, you old rat, you’re actually putting some flesh on your bones. And I’ll bet a hen worth fifteen cents that not an ounce of it is fat—nothing but good old hard, stringy muscle.”
Purdick drew a long breath. “It’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “The hardest thing I’m going to have to learn when we go back to the towns is how to sleep under a roof again. But speaking of finding things: I picked up a queer-looking piece of stuff down there by the creek where I went to get a drink this afternoon. I forgot to show it to you,” and he took the specimen from his pocket and passed it around.
Looked at through the magnifier, or even without the glass, the specimen was a very beautiful thing. It looked like a sliver of limestone, one side of which was covered with a thick incrustation of fine little red crystals, six-sided prisms glowing with a peculiar lustre that was neither garnet nor ruby, but a shade between. Since they were out to test every unfamiliar substance they came across, the blowpipe was put into service once more, and Dick blew until his cheeks ached.
Heated in the original mass there was nothing doing, so they powdered a few of the crystals in the porcelain mortar, mixed the powder with borax and salt of phosphorus, and tried it again. In the oxidizing flame—the hottest flame that can be produced with the blowpipe—a clear glass bead, dark yellow in the heat, was quickly formed, and this bead, when cooled, turned to a light yellow color.
Larry was turning the leaves of the mineralogy book and running a finger over the subject heads.
“I was reading about something that did that way, just the other day,” he said, “but I can’t remember what it was. By jing!—what the dickens was it? Something that’s dark yellow, hot, and light yellow when it cools. Shucks! If I didn’t have such a good forgettery——”
Purdick had been watching the experiment narrowly. “Try it in the reducing flame, Dick,” he suggested.
Dick did it. With the tip of the blowpipe withdrawn just outside of the candle flame he held the yellow glass bead inside of the tip of the inner cone of combustion that is intensified by this manner of blowing. Almost at once the bead turned a brownish color, and Dick carefully withdrew it to see what the cooling reaction would be. The change which took place was marvelous and very beautiful. As it lost its heat the little bead turned to a brilliant chrome green.
“I’ve got it!” snapped Purdick. “Larry, look in the index for vanadinite!”
Larry searched, found, turned to the proper page.