Then mist once more, and a sort of awakening, as if sunlight had come through the mist, and she was in the garden with the Reverend Arthur Rosebury, who looked strange in his long coat, as he stooped to pick her flowers, and handed one to her that had a shape like a cup; and he said to her “Drink—drink!” and in her dream she seemed to drink, expecting to find that out of that flower-cup she would drink honey, while this was intensely bitter; and it was not a flower-cup, but metal, and it was not the Reverend Arthur Rosebury who offered the cup to her, but someone else; and while she was trying to listen who it was, for she could not see, all became silent once again, and blank, and she knew no more.
Volume Three—Chapter Twelve.
Doctor Bolter’s Spirit.
Gold! What ideas that one word opens out—what magic it contains! But credit must be given to Doctor Bolter for the fact that it was no sordid love of the yellow metal that prompted him to search for gold.
He wanted it for no luxury; he had no wealthy man’s desires to quell; all he wished was to make that grand discovery that would prove the Malay Peninsula to have been the Ophir to which King Solomon’s ships came in search of treasure; and of this he wanted ample proof, such as he could lay before a committee of learned men. How was it to be obtained?
Doctor Bolter asked himself this question a dozen times over, but no answer came. He asked the question as he stood there up to his knees in water, examining his pannikins full of sand and gravel, which he took from the bottom of the little river, where it now displayed all the characteristics of a mountain stream.
He tried several pannikins full, scooping up the sand and gravel from likely places, and after picking out the larger stones, washing carefully till nothing remained after the water had been drained off but pure sand.
This he would examine in the full light of the sun, seeking in vain for little water-worn nuggets or specks and scales of gold; but for some time his efforts were unsuccessful; and they went on higher and higher, the shallowness, and the difficulties of the journey increasing at every stride, till, trying at a spot where the rapid stream swirled round the end of a great mass of stone, the doctor washed a pannikin of sand, and then uttered a grunt of satisfaction, for there at the bottom, glittering in the sunshine, were dozens of tiny specks of gold mingled with the grit.