“You’ve cut your eye-teeth since then.”
“I have had some experience of the world, but I may get taken in again.”
Joe and his friend found the miners social and very ready to give them information.
“How much do I make a day?” said one in answer to a question from Joshua. “Well, it varies. Sometimes I make ten dollars, and from that all the way up to twenty-five. Once I found a piece worth fifty dollars. I was in luck then.”
“I should say you were,” said Mr. Bickford. “The idea of findin’ fifty dollars in the river. It looks kind of strange, don’t it, Joe?”
“Are any larger pieces ever found here?” asked Joe.
“Sometimes.”
“I have seen larger nuggets on exhibition in San Francisco, worth several hundred dollars. Are any such to be found here?”
“Generally they come from the dry diggings. We don’t often find such specimens in the river washings. But these are more reliable.”
“Can a man save money here?”