"What is it you have found, Mr. Marshall?" asked the men.
"Gold!" he exclaimed, excitedly. The men threw down their tools and gathered about him to examine the new find.
"No, no; you are mistaken," they said, when they had turned the pebbles over, and held them to the light, and hammered them with a stone.
"I am certain that it is," he stoutly maintained, but they only laughed at him. He paid no attention to them but turned on the water the next night. Then he picked up all the yellow lumps he found in the sand, and putting them into a little bag hastened to the man for whom he was building the mill, and said:
"I have found gold at the sawmill, and want you to come and see for yourself."
His employer tested and weighed the shining mass carefully, and finally said:
"You are right. It is real gold. Go back to the mill, but say nothing until we get it finished. If you do the men will quit work and we shall have no one to take their places."
"THE DISCOVERY OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY"