his chin.

Suddenly he sat upright. "Bill!" he called sharply. "Now, listen to me, Bill;
d'ye hear! It's up to you, to-morrow mornin', to mosey round an' see what you

can see. Understand? Tomorrow morning, an' don't you forget it!"
He yawned and glanced across at his side-hill. "Good night, Mr. Pocket," he

called.
In the morning he stole a march on the sun, for he had finished breakfast when

its first rays caught him, and he was climbing the wall of the canyon where it
crumbled away and gave footing. From the outlook at the top he found himself

in the midst of loneliness. As far as he could see, chain after chain of
mountains heaved themselves into his vision. To the east his eyes, leaping the

miles between range and range and between many ranges, brought up at last
against the white-peaked Sierras--the main crest, where the backbone of the

Western world reared itself against the sky. To the north and south he could
see more distinctly the cross-systems that broke through the main trend of the

sea of mountains. To the west the ranges fell away, one behind the other,
diminishing and fading into the gentle foothills that, in turn, descended into

the great valley which he could not see.
And in all that mighty sweep of earth he saw no sign of man nor of the

handiwork of man--save only the torn bosom of the hillside at his feet. The
man looked long and carefully. Once, far down his own canyon, he thought he

saw in the air a faint hint of smoke. He looked again and decided that it was
the purple haze of the hills made dark by a convolution of the canyon wall at

its back.
"Hey, you, Mr. Pocket!" he called down into the canyon. "Stand out from under!

I'm a-comin', Mr. Pocket! I'm a-comin'!"
The heavy brogans on the man's feet made him appear clumsy-footed, but he

swung down from the giddy height as lightly and airily as a mountain goat. A
rock, turning under his foot on the edge of the precipice, did not disconcert

him. He seemed to know the precise time required for the turn to culminate in
disaster, and in the meantime he utilized the false footing itself for the

momentary earth-contact necessary to carry him on into safety. Where the earth
sloped so steeply that it was impossible to stand for a second upright, the

man did not hesitate. His foot pressed the impossible surface for but a
fraction of the fatal second and gave him the bound that carried him onward.

Again, where even the fraction of a second's footing was out of the question,
he would swing his body past by a moment's hand-grip on a jutting knob of

rock, a crevice, or a precariously rooted shrub. At last, with a wild leap and
yell, he exchanged the face of the wall for an earth-slide and finished the

descent in the midst of several tons of sliding earth and gravel.
His first pan of the morning washed out over two dollars in coarse gold. It

was from the centre of the "V." To either side the diminution in the values of
the pans was swift. His lines of crosscutting holes were growing very short.

The converging sides of the inverted "V" were only a few yards apart. Their
meeting-point was only a few yards above him. But the pay-streak was dipping

deeper and deeper into the earth. By early afternoon he was sinking the
test-holes five feet before the pans could show the gold-trace.

For that matter, the gold-trace had become something more than a trace; it was
a placer mine in itself, and the man resolved to come back after he had found

the pocket and work over the ground. But the increasing richness of the pans
began to worry him. By late afternoon the worth of the pans had grown to three

and four dollars. The man scratched his head perplexedly and looked a few feet
up the hill at the manzanita bush that marked approximately the apex of the

"V." He nodded his head and said oracularly:
"It's one o' two things, Bill; one o' two things. Either Mr. Pocket's spilled

himself all out an' down the hill, or else Mr. Pocket's that damned rich you
maybe won't be able to carry him all away with you. And that'd be hell,

wouldn't it, now?" He chuckled at contemplation of so pleasant a dilemma.
Nightfall found him by the edge of the stream his eyes wrestling with the

gathering darkness over the washing of a five-dollar pan.
"Wisht I had an electric light to go on working." he said.

He found sleep difficult that night. Many times he composed himself and closed
his eyes for slumber to overtake him; but his blood pounded with too strong

desire, and as many times his eyes opened and he murmured wearily, "Wisht it
was sun-up." Sleep came to him in the end, but his eyes were open with the

first paling or the stars, and the gray of dawn caught him with breakfast
finished and climbing the hillside in the direction of the secret

abiding-place of Mr. Pocket.
The first cross-cut the man made, there was space for only three holes, so

narrow had become the pay-streak and so close was he to the fountainhead of
the golden stream he had been following for four days.

"Be ca'm, Bill; be calm," he admonished himself, as he broke ground for the
final hole where the sides of the "V" had at last come together in a point.

"I've got the almighty cinch on you, Mr. Pocket, an' you can't lose me," he
said many times as he sank the hole deeper and deeper.

Four feet, five feet, six feet, he dug his way down into the earth. The
digging grew harder. His pick grated on broken rock. He examined the rock.

"Rotten quartz," was his conclusion as, with the shovel, he cleared the bottom
of the hole of loose dirt. He attacked the crumbling quartz with the pick,

bursting the disintegrating rock asunder with every stroke.
He thrust his shovel into the loose mass. His eye caught a gleam of yellow. He

dropped the shovel and squatted suddenly on his heels. As a farmer rubs the
clinging earth from fresh-dug potatoes, so the man, a piece of rottenquartz

held in both hands, rubbed the dirt away.
"Sufferin' Sardanopolis!" he cried. "Lumps an' chunks of it! Lumps an' chunks

of it!"
It was only half rock he held in his hand. The other half was virgin gold. He

dropped it into his pan and examined another piece. Little yellow was to be
seen, but with his strong fingers he crumbled the rottenquartz away till both

hands were filled with glowing yellow. He rubbed the dirt away from fragment
after fragment, tossing them into the gold-pan. It was a treasure-hole. So

much had the quartz rotted away that there was less of it than there was of
gold. Now and again he found a piece to which no rock clung--a piece that was

all gold. A chunk, where the pick had laid open the heart of the gold,
glittered like a handful of yellow jewels, and he cocked his head at it and

slowly turned it around and over to observe the rich play of the light upon
it.

"Talk about yer Too Much Gold diggin's!" the man snorted contemptuously. "Why,
this diggin' 'd make it look like thirty cents. This diggin' is All Gold. An'

right here an' now I name this yere canyon 'All Gold Canyon,' b' gosh!"
Still squatting on his heels, he continued examining the fragments and tossing

them into the pan. Suddenly there came to him a premonition of danger. It
seemed a shadow had fallen upon him. But there was no shadow. His heart had

given a great jump up into his throat and was choking him. Then his blood
slowly chilled and he felt the sweat of his shirt cold against his flesh.

He did not spring up nor look around. He did not move. He was considering the
nature of the premonition he had received, trying to locate the source of the

mysterious force that had warned him, striving to sense the imperative
presence of the unseen thing that threatened him. There is an aura of things

hostile, made manifest by messengers refined for the senses to know; and this
aura he felt, but knew not how he felt it. His was the feeling as when a cloud

passes over the sun. It seemed that between him and life had passed something
dark and smothering and menacing; a gloom, as it were, that swallowed up life

and made for death--his death.
Every force of his being impelled him to spring up and confront the unseen

danger, but his soul dominated the panic, and he remained squatting on his
heels, in his hands a chunk of gold. He did not dare to look around, but he

knew by now that there was something behind him and above him. He made believe
to be interested in the gold in his hand. He examined it critically, turned it

over and over, and rubbed the dirt from it. And all the time he knew that
something behind him was looking at the gold over his shoulder.

Still feigning interest in the chunk of gold in his hand, he listened intently
and he heard the breathing of the thing behind him. His eyes searched the

ground in front of him for a weapon, but they saw only the uprooted gold,
worthless to him now in his extremity. There was his pick, a handy weapon on

occasion; but this was not such an occasion. The man realized his predicament.
He was in a narrow hole that was seven feet deep. His head did not come to the

surface of the ground. He was in a trap.
He remained squatting on his heels. He was quite cool and collected; but his

mind, considering every factor, showed him only his helplessness. He continued
rubbing the dirt from the quartzfragments and throwing the gold into the pan.