The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-06-26


 By repetition of the process he at last
 obtained an average" which he stow
 ed in one of the little canvas bags.
 At the end of the day he dumped ar
 average" into a heavy iron mortar ovel
 which pestle was suspended from 6
 springy sapling. By alternately pulling
 down and letting up on the sapling the
 pestle was made to crush the quartz
 fragments into fine red and white sand This Peter poured and scraped into a 1laring-s sided iron pan, into which he Jet
 a quantity of water. He then Wlirled
 the pan in a peculiar manner, pauslng
 to rock it back and forth every few
 minutes. Much of the sand thus flowed
 over the sides. After the fiji st water was
 all gone he poured in some more. Thus 1 he planned the waste out, until at last
 nothing was left in the angle but some heavy block grains. These were the con
 centrates. By delft rocking in one di-
 rection they were made to string out in a long, fan-shaped mass, at the apex of which was the fine yellow gold-that is,
 where there was any.
 In this way Peter slowly got an idea
 of the country. Some lodges which
 seemed to him promising, and yet which
 did not show free gold at the top he ex-
 plotted still further With a charge or | so of powder he penetrated to a layer | below the surface. Or perhaps he spent | several hard months making an irregu- lar deep hole like well, from which he
 carried the debris in bags. climbing up a notched tree. Then he selected more samples. This is hard work. When he had learned the country pretty thor oughly, Peter staked out his claims. There were four of these. Then he be- gan sinking on all four. Working alone, he could make about foot of progress a day. By winter he was far enough below ground so that he did not feel the cold Occasionally he would make short cross-cut-that is, tun- nel across the trend of the strata-to see how far it was to the wall; sometimes he would drift-that is, tunnel in in the di- rection of the strata-to see how the quality of the lead held out All this took time, as did the timbering and the trips for supplies Men in the town called him Happy Peter, because he was always humming a quaint little song, and because his eyes beamed with SuC0 SlPaQy, gentle KlIlCllneSS,
 Time slips by rapidly in the hills. You get up at daylight and cook break fast; you carry water up to your shaft you spend all the morning making lit tie hole in the rock with drill; at noon you blast; in the afternoon you haul bucketfuls of broken rock out with windlass The night has come. You measure the days by what you have &C., complished, and it is little. You meas ure time by your trips to camp, and they are few. One morning Peter, in looking into his little square mirror, caught sight of a gray hair. He looked closer. There were many of them. With sud den great pang he realized that he was getting to be an old man. He took from the table the miniature of a girl with great gray eyes, He wondered if she was getting to be an old woman. At the thought. Happy Peter became another man. He rode to town that very day over the mountains, through the gorges -and showed them what he had found. Then he returned.
 The morning after men came into the lonely gulch. In an hour the side hills were covered with them. Between the trees figures glanced to and fro, as patches of red or flashes of light reflect cd from polished metal. White claim stakes sprang, mushroom like, in thick punches of four. Tn the canyon was the ] gleam of fires; the smell of wood and of bacon broiling was in the air; white lean-tos shone among the bare bushes and saplings Horses were feeding ea- ,,,yl tJa browse of trees, raising their heads as the creak of wheels further down the | draw told of still newcomers,
 Peter looked with excited satisfaction. This meant prosperity. This meant that on the morrow a new town would de- serve 8 place on the map. This meant, above all, that Peters claims would | have value, that he could sell them out at price, and that he could grow old happily in a country itself as old as his distant youth He wandered reStlessly | from one of his four claims to the other. He told himself that this time he would make a careful bargain. The need was mmanent in the light of this discovery of gray hairs. It had never seemed so before. He began to forestall difficulties In his mind. It should be spot cash nothing else. Peter knew just what his claims were worth, and he knew what ne would get for them. The sale should De by deed, legally this for that. Then 1e would go east at once.
 He cast in review the technicalities of mining laws. He had staked the claims he had got the proper assess nent work on each; perhaps it would lave been better if he had had it record ,d. At once he made a tour of his prop rty to see if all the notices were in )lace. It had never occurred to him be- ore that some one might jump him. Peter began to think it might have been wiser to have brought the purchaser in lere quietly, without pointing a boom 'erplexed and tortured with doubt and nxieties, he spent the remainder of the ay in going from claim to claim.
 His accustomed aspect of gentle inn 'assivity had left him. His eye became nifty and suspicious His hands worked nervously In his doubt there an excitement which would ot let him rest even for an instant. 'or he realized that this was the last hance Heretofore he had had the con- ciousness of youth to encourage him. allure had meant only delay. Now it leant finality. There was left to him l Ould again dig his shafts and blast his lnnels old age would have banished his : reams and his hopes together.