"What nonsense!" ejaculated Mr. Field testily. "I've explored every part of the district for miles round, and know every inch of it well, and I could show you half a dozen valleys where there were similar rocks, any one of which might be Wild Goat Gully."
"I don't think there are, father," chimed in Julius, "for I asked old Joe the trapper, who has lived there all his life, and he told me just the same as Judge Simmons. He said it was 'unique,' and I remember when I asked you what that was, you said it meant there wasn't another like it in the world."
"If you contradict me in this way, Julius, you may just leave the room," said his father in an angry tone. "I won't have lies told at my table, even by my own son. Do you hear me, Julius? Be off with you this instant, or I'll give you a thrashing that you won't soon forget."
"It's quite true, father," stoutly asserted the boy. "You know you've often said to me that no one could equal the Good Hope mine any more than they could match the yellow splash on its cliff."
A box on the ears was Mr. Field's only reply, as he grasped the lad by the arm and hustled him out of the door.
"I am sorry, sir," he said when he returned to the table, "but I am ashamed to say my boy has developed a terrible faculty for telling the most deliberate untruths, and I have to do my best to check him. He seems to take a perfect delight in inventing stories without a shadow of foundation, and in sticking to them at all costs."
"I believe the child's version was the right one," said Judge Simmons to himself as he motored back to Lanthorne Abbey. "Why should Field be so anxious to demonstrate that orange streaks were such very ordinary things?"
Suddenly he sat up and gave a low exclamation.
"What if he wished to prove to me that Good Hope mine could not possibly be the same as Wild Goat Gully? That's a question which opens out some interesting answers. I guess I'll make some enquiries when I get back to California again."
CHAPTER IV