“We’ve struck the lode!” he exclaimed.
Weston was beside him in a moment, and Devine poured the crushed fragments into his hand.
“Look!” he said.
Weston did so, and while his heart thumped painfully the blood crept to his face. The little lumps he gazed at were milky white, and through them ran what seemed to be very fine yellow threads.
“That is wire gold?”
“It is,” said Devine. “A sure thing.”
Then the surveyor swept off his battered hat and swung round toward the willows, a grotesque ragged figure with his hands spread out.
“You weren’t crazy, partner. You brought us up out of the swamps and sloos of poverty, and planked us down right on to the lode,” he said.
Weston said nothing. After all, he was English, and to some extent reticent, but he felt that his comrade’s dramatic utterance was more or less warranted, for the irony and pathos of the situation was clear to him. Grenfell had found the mine at last, but the gold he had sought so persistently was not for him. Men great in the mining world had smiled compassionately at his story, others with money to invest had coldly turned their backs on him, and it had been given to a railroad hand and a surveyor, who had longed for an opportunity for splitting roofing shingles in return for enough to eat, to prove that, after all, the skill he had once been proud of had not deserted him. He had patiently borne defeat, and now the thrill of the long-deferred triumph had crushed him out of existence.
In a moment or two Devine spoke again in a different tone.