"I have, indeed, Mary," said he, with his eyes fixed on vacancy, for the visions that haunted his mind in the hours of sleep by night, or when his thoughts were drifting back to the material world in the early hours of morning, showed the tenor of those other dreams that haunted him in the hours of wakefulness by day. "Was it again of the mysterious treasure ship--the quaint old Argosy stranded in yonder Barnstaple Bay, deserted by her crew and left high and dry by the ebbing sea, with the great golden doubloons flowing in torrents through her gaping seams, and piled like glittering oyster-shells in heaps upon the sand, where you and I were gathering them up in handfuls--for you often have such fancies in your sleep, Greville?" she added, nestling her sweet face lovingly and laughingly on his neck, anxious to soothe and humour him. "It was not of ships, Mary," he replied, with an arm caressingly around her; "but of a strange and wondrous land--a scene amid stupendous mountain ranges, like what we have heard of, or read of, as being in the Great Basin of California, or the Cordilleras, hemmed in on every side by mighty steeps. It was indeed a strange dream, Mary, and most vivid, distinct and coherent in all its details--painfully so, when the moment of waking came. Falling aslant the mountains the sun's rays struck upon a streak in a mass of volcanic rock, which gave back a yellow gleam. I struck the mass with a hammer--a fragment fell at my feet--it was gold--pure gold! Again and again I struck, and huge nuggets of the precious metal fell down before me, while at every stroke my heart beat painfully yet exultingly, and my breath came thick and fast. I was there, I thought, alone; the land around me was my own, with the conviction that far in the bosom of the mighty mountains rose the strata of precious metal--a wondrous land, where the teeth of the black cattle, of the mules and the goats that grazed upon their grassy sides, were tinted yellow by the gold with which the soil abounded. Could my dreamland have been in California?" he asked, as if talking to himself. "What visions of boundless wealth came before me; and what mighty power would that wealth command! Again and again I wielded my hammer, and the heap before me seemed to increase, till my brain became giddy with the thoughts that swept athwart it. Could my vision have been of California?" he continued dreamily to himself, rather than to Mary; "it must have been--it must have been among the Rocky Mountains that my soul was wandering while my body slept." "Oh, Greville, darling, don't talk in this wild way." "I should like to search for that place, Mary; it exists somewhere, and I am sure I should know it again." "Heavens, Greville, you would not think of going there, and on the strength only of a dream?" "No, Mary; you are not adapted to the life of a digger's wife," said he with a tender smile.