I looked at him inquiringly.
“I examined it while you were asleep, Mayne,” he said.
“Then you have a good deal stored up here?”
“Yes—somewhere,” he said. “I’ll show you one of these days. Now then; ready?”
We declared our readiness, and once more we began work, out in the silence of that beautiful valley, digging, washing, and examining, as we picked out the soft deadened golden scales, beads, grains, and tiny smooth nuggets.
We all worked our hardest, Quong being indefatigable, and darting back, after running off to see to the fire, to dig and wash with the best of us.
We had very fair success, but nothing dazzling, and the gold we found was added to the bank on the fourth day, this bank proving to be a leather bag which Mr Gunson dug up carefully in my presence, while I stared at him, and burst out laughing at his choice of what I thought so silly and unsafe a place for his findings.
“Why do you laugh?” he said, quietly. “Do you think I might have had a strong box instead of a leather bag?”
“I should have thought that you would have buried it in some out-of-the-way, deserted corner,” I said. “I could find hundreds about.”
“Yes,” he said; “and so could other people, my lad. Those are the very spots they would have searched. I wanted a place where no one would look.”