While he was speaking, he had hurried to the clearing at the back of the cabin, comparing the lay of the land with the picture, Evelyn following with keenest anxiety at this new phase of his delusion, yet not knowing how to restrain him.
"Father, dear, don't," she remonstrated, seeing him uprooting a willow with frenzied eagerness. "Why, that's the bush on which I spread out my wash."
But Durant only laughed and went on spading up the soft earth with a bit of wood. Wild as were his actions, his face and bearing had regained all their old, light-hearted poise. He was as Evelyn always had known him on his occasional visits to her, when they spent money like princes and amused themselves like children.
Soon he threw his improvised tool aside. "Here we are! Look at this, Evie!"
Evelyn took the substance he handed to her, and, as the earth crumbled from it, saw that it was of irregular shape, and oddly indented, as though some underground giant had chewed it with Titanic teeth before spewing it up for man's good or ill, as fate might decree. A slight, bluish hue with which it first met the eye melted softly into that indefinable lustre that proclaims gold and only gold—the lust for which is more potent than the love of woman, wine; in whose quest more lives have been sacrificed than for any other cause since the world began; for whose possession souls innumerable are being bartered every day.
"A sixty-dollar nugget," Durant appraised it, weighing it in his expert hand, "and valuable merely as an earnest of what lies beneath—just a chip of the old block; a clue to the great Lode! Now, to take possession formally!" He paced the ground, whittled and marked the stakes, and was preparing to post them, when a sudden thought arrested him. "But—the land now lies within the township limits!" he groaned. "Oh, my girl, what, if, after all, my luck should fail you!"
Evelyn smiled happily. "I think I can come to your assistance in that matter. If you will call to-morrow morning at the office of E. Durant you can acquire the mineral rights from the present owner of the lot, who happens to be—myself. Then you can record it as soon as the Commissioner's books are open."
"But——" Durant looked about with a touch of the furtive apprehension that had shadowed his recent life, and that never wholly left him. "Suppose some one has seen—how can I defend it?"
"Oh," cried Evelyn, "no fear about that! There are no claim-jumpers in this camp, thanks to Scarlett of the Mounted."
"Aye, Scarlett. A fine fellow that. He did me a great kindness last year," said her father. "It began by his finding your picture, which I had dropped, and giving it back to me. If my foresight had been equal to my hindsight, I should have confided my discovery to him as soon as I made it, and so saved you this year of bitter experience, my girl."