get so much as an ounce o’ salts. Oh, don’t, don’t!”
“I’m not ill,” I said at last. “There’s nothing the matter.”
“Then what do you mean by frightening a fellow like that? I say, I like a game sometimes, but that’s too bad.”
“I—I didn’t want to startle you, Esau,” I said, hurriedly, as the giddy sensation passed away. “Look—look here.”
I held my hands open before him, raising one from the other slowly, as I felt half afraid that it was partly fancy, and that when my hand was quite open, that which I believed I held would be gone.
“Well?” said Esau, “what of it? Wet stones? Think you’d caught a little trout?”
“No, no,” I cried impatiently. “Look—look!”
I raised one finger of my right hand, and began to separate the little water-worn stones with my palm raised in the sunshine, and for a few moments neither spoke. Then as Esau suddenly caught sight of some half-dozen smoothly-ground scales, and a tiny flattened bead with quite a tail to it, he uttered a shout.
“Hooray!” he cried. “Gold! That beats old Quong; he never got as much as that in his tin plate. Yah! ’tain’t gold. Don’t believe it! it’s what old Gunson called Pyrrymids.”