“There’s gold down there,” he exploded. “Loads of it! Sacks and sacks of gold, Dick, piled up down there in moose-hide sacks, waiting to be carried away!”

For a brief interval Dick was incapable of speech.

“Go-o-ld!” he stammered.

“Yes, gold!—thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth, I guess.”

Dick’s eyes were popping.

“So they hid it there.”

“Hid nothing!” Sandy was pacing back and forth in his excitement. “The real mine’s down there, I tell you. Right under our feet.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Go down and see for yourself,” shrieked Sandy. “It’s there,—it’s there, I tell you! Passages lead out three ways from that main hole or shaft. I could see them.”

“And those moose-hide sacks?”