“Safe enough. And our young friend here has made a discovery such as is made only once in a generation.” He told of the find in the cavern they had just left.
“But look here!” Scott exclaimed when he had finished and they had rejoiced together.
He drew a letter from his pocket and read it aloud. It had come in answer to his enquiry regarding the films he had left in Winnipeg. It explained that the suite of offices to which the vault belonged had been sublet; that the vault had been cleared of all obsolete material, and that through some mistake the films had been sold with waste paper to a junk man.
“That means,” Johnny’s face lighted with a broad smile as he spoke, “that those people in that other camp bought them from the junk man.”
“As they had a perfect right to do,” supplemented Sandy.
“And that’s that!” Johnny did a wild whirl on the hard crusted snow.
“‘Joy cometh in the morning!’” he exclaimed. “For a long time I’ve been feeling mean about our plans to hop in and file on land close to those other prospectors if they made a strike.
“I’ve insisted that one of them is a crook. Joyce Mills has stuck to it that they were the right sort, each and every one. And it seems she’s right. For if they bought the films, who can say they did not have the right to use them?”
“Who indeed?” Sandy’s face lighted with a smile that was good to see. “And who wants gold when he may mine radium?”
“Come on, Ginger!” Johnny set his leader on his feet. “We’re going to be the first to break the glad news to Joyce Mills.”