"We are just going a-prospecting for the mountain of gold," Abe replied, "and as we have got six months' stores aboard we mean to find it. We will send you down a few nuggets when we get up there." "We shall have some of them after us in a day or two," John Little said; "every one suspects every one else; and they will make a pretty story of it, I guess, thinking as we shouldn't have brought the women up all this distance without having some place in our minds." At last they arrived at their destination, the mouth of a little gorge running off the deep valley of the north Yuba. The gorge widened out into a narrow valley, and the party made its way among the pebbles and boulders at its bottom for a quarter of a mile, and then three men came out from among the trees and greeted them heartily. "No one has been up here?" John Little asked. "Two chaps came up and prospected about a bit, but they did not seem to hit on the right place; at any rate they went away again." "All the better," John said. "Now let us stake out our claims at once, then we are all right, whoever comes." The spot selected was at the head of the little valley; it ended here abruptly, and the stream came down forty feet precipitously into a hollow. [Illustration: GOLD-WASHING--A GOOD DAY'S WORK.] "This looks a likely spot, indeed," Abe said; "there must have been a thundering great waterfall here in the old days. I expect it wore a hole for itself in the rock, and if it is as rich as you say on the surface, there is no saying how rich it may be when we get down to the bed rock." They had already settled that the two parties should work in partnership, and as, including the women and boys, they numbered fifteen, and could take up the five claims which, by mining law, the discoverer of a new place was entitled to, they had in all twenty claims, which gave them the whole of the little amphitheatre at the foot of the fall for a distance of fifty yards down. The men all set to work with their axes, and by nightfall much had been done. Frank's party had their tent, and the two small tents of the other party were allotted to the married couples. A rough hut was got up for the rest of the men; this was to act as the kitchen and general room. A storehouse was erected of stout logs, with earth piled thickly over it to keep out the wet, and here their stores were securely housed. The tents and huts were on the slope, where the rocks widened out twenty yards below the bottom of their claim. It was late in the second evening before the work was done. All were anxious to test the ground, but it was agreed not to touch it until they had housed themselves. At daybreak they were at work, and soon all were washing out pans of gravel at the stream; the results fully justified their expectations,--there being a residuum of glittering grains at the bottom of each pan varying in weight from a pennyweight to a quarter of an ounce.