“What d’yer mean? Dig him up again? You’re joking!” Turner laughed uncomfortably. “Of course, if it had been lighter, we’d have seen that this was pay dirt. And naturally we’d have washed it out. Just because it was too dark to see----” “But we _buried_ him!” exclaimed Aleck McAdams. “This ain’t no placer dump. This is a grave. Grave of my old pal. What the devil are we? Body snatchers? Ghouls?” “I’d hardly thought it of _you_!” Turner replied, reddening. “About as unsentimental a devil as I ever saw.” “Yeah, you told me I ain’t got no sentiment. What have _you_ got?” Turner frowned and bit his lip. “There’s a difference between sentiment and sentimentality. The former--sentiment--is a mighty good thing to use on living people. I didn’t roar at him and jerk the covers over his shoulders as if he was a horse, but he’s dead now--clay. It’s the most puerile sentimentality to talk about the sacredness of a mere grave.” “Oh, it is hey? Well, I admit I don’t know the difference between the sentiment and the ‘tality’ you stick on it. But I do know I was riz decent, and I know what the homefolks think about graves and graveyards. Why, man, look what you wrote yourself!” With a stubby finger Aleck McAdams pointed closely to the verse of the epitaph. Painfully squinting, he read out the words: “‘Blest be the man that spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves my bones.’ Hey, you don’t want to be cussed, do yer? Cussed for life fer a grave-snatching ghoul? Your own pal, at that? Poor old Nock!” Alfred Turner’s eyes were averted. He smoked the last half of his cigarette in three long puffs and tossed the stub away with a determined gesture. He was as big, as quick and as strong as McAdams, and younger by fifteen years. However, he would try his wit first. He scooped a handful of the rich pay dirt. “Do you realize, McAdams, what we have here? Not a dozen buckets of gravel, probably. A couple of hundred pans at the most, and perhaps as much more that you didn’t disturb in digging the hole.” “Hole, is it? Just a hole! Sentimental, you are, fer a fact!” “Just wait a minute. You’re a placer miner. You know what gravel goes to the pan when you can see the gold in it--pick out nuggets with your fingers! There’s five, six, seven thousand dollars in this pothole, this pocket, just as sure as the world. _I_ need the money--need it bad, if you don’t. You’re broke, ain’t you?” “What’s that got to do with it?” demanded McAdams. Turner studied him. Was it affectation? No, the fellow looked frankly bewildered at the question. Was it cupidity? Did he intend later to return and take it all? “It’s all right, this sentimentality--for that’s what it is--mere mawkish sentimentality. If you can afford it! Why we’d be just plain fools if we went off without it!” McAdams had recourse to the grimy bandanna. He mopped his brow.