“It looks like prospectors without a prospect.”
“What Mr. Brunt said as to our chances is probably true, judging from our experience so far; but I wish to prove it to my own satisfaction before I accept it,” replied Phil. “Whatever my judgment may tell me, I can’t help feeling that there is rich pay earth somewhere in the hills.”
“Well, I think you’d better stop right here and tackle the mud yonder.”
“Perhaps I will when the month is up,” replied Phil good-naturedly. “Good night!”
“Good morning, Mrs. Brunt! We’ve had a splendid sleep and are ready to pitch in with the pitchfork,” exclaimed Phil the next morning when the boys came downstairs bright and early.
“I’m glad to hear it,” responded Mrs. Brunt heartily. “You’ve been sleeping on the best mattress within fifty miles, and that accounts for it. Perhaps you’d like to look around a little before breakfast. You’ll find Mr. Brunt milking the cow down by the pond. Just follow the trail and you’ll find him.”
The boys gladly acted on the suggestion, and sauntered over a rustic bridge that spanned the stream. The trail led them into a thick grove of firs filled with the murmurs of the babbling waters, which here flowed over a sharp descent. A sudden turn in the path brought them to the edge of the grove where a splendid prospect burst upon their view.
One feature of it made Phil Gormley stop and clutch Tom by the arm!
The mountain pass widened suddenly at this point in the form of a semicircle on each side, while a quarter of a mile away the flanking mountains swept so close together again that there was only a very narrow outlet between two opposing spurs. A great basin was thus formed of over a quarter of a mile across—how deep, they could not tell, because a great sheet of still water filled the hollow. Beyond, from spur to spur, ran a chain of spile heads, which showed that man, not nature, had made this lake. Over the dam the water lazily trickled, forming the continuation of the stream they had followed from Placer Notch. It was not necessary for Tom to ask the cause of Phil’s agitation. Their conversation of the day before had flashed across him as the artificial lake burst into view. Just below them was Sol, seated on a rock and milking his single cow, in a strip of meadow that fringed the sheet of water.