It was
all but indiscernible, but his practised eye had sketched the
hidden formation which it signified. Here and there, along this
wall of the vein, he attacked the crumbling rock with the pick
and shoveled the encumbering soil away. Several times he
examined this rock. So soft was some of it that he could break
it in his fingers. Shifting a dozen feet higher up, he again
attacked with pick and shovel. And this time, when he rubbed the
soil from a chunk of rock and looked, he straightened up
suddenly, gasping with delight. And then, like a deer at a
drinking pool in fear of its enemies, he flung a quick glance
around to see if any eye were gazing upon him. He grinned at his
own foolishness and returned to his examination of the chunk. A
slant of sunlight fell on it, and it was all aglitter with tiny
specks of unmistakable free gold.
"From the grass roots down," he muttered in an awestricken voice,
as he swung his pick into the yielding surface.
He seemed to undergo a transformation. No quart of cocktails had
ever put such a flame in his cheeks nor such a fire in his eyes.
As he worked, he was caught up in the old passion that had ruled
most of his life.
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