"Right over the gutter!" he exclaimed. "The sinker said so; but he wasn't the man to sink anywhere else. Don't you remember him saying we were within a few feet of it? Jimmy, I'm going through some of those feet before I'm an hour older, and we'll try the first tub to-night!" He went down at once in the bucket, armed with a spade--a complete plant had been thrown in with the claim--and for an hour he dug straight down, making the smallest and deepest hole possible, and finally filling the bucket from the bottom. But it was hard work. The red clay was so veritably rotten that again and again the little hole filled up. Denis's shirt was plastered to his skin when Doherty wound him above ground with the bucket, and the clay in the latter was still as red as ever. Denis took it to the creek, however, and tried it piecemeal in a tin dish, but did not get a grain. He returned to Doherty unruffled and smiling. "It's no use, Jimmy; we've not got down to it yet, and we sha'n't get down to it like that. We must go on digging the whole shaft. But there's another good hour of daylight, and if you like to go down and do a trick I'll wind up the buckets as you fill them." As the shaft went down by inches the sides had to be slabbed as heretofore; but the "sets of timber" stacked outside the tent proved to be cut to the size, pointed, and ready for fitting into the grooved uprights, which in their turn were found to have been driven into the four corners of the shaft to a depth of several feet beyond that of the shaft itself. So there was no difficulty there while the cut slabs lasted, and as the pair worked half the night in their excitement, by lantern light, and were at it again by sunrise, they had added some three or four feet to the depth by the following forenoon. Then Denis tried another little hole in the middle, and this time the third spadeful was different from the other two. Some particles of gravel trickled from the end of the spade, and even what was on it was of two colours and two consistencies. The next thrust grated to the ear. Denis roared for the bucket, and a head and shoulders stamped themselves upon the square envelope of sky overhead. "I've struck it! I've struck it! Down with the bucket and stand by to wind up!"