Over their evening ale, at the tavern, the probabilities and possibilities of gold or silver being found in the mountain, were discussed with various degrees of profundity, and the certainty that something of the kind was there, was most sagely resolved on. Time, in whose crucible all doubts are solved, soon confirmed their sagacity by a “copper button” presented to the landlord with the compliments of Uptosnuff, with hints, but not positive injunctions as to secrecy. He knew his man. “What do you think of that?” asked Drawitwell, of his cronies the same evening, with an air of authority, holding up the copper button. “What _do_ you think of that, my lads?” “_Hellow!_” exclaimed the bewildered cobbler, “landlord, why—why is _that goold_?” “Gold, you fool! No, it’s _not_ gold—but it’s a precious sight more valuable—because there is a great deal more of it used.” “Why what on earth is it, then?” asked the blacksmith, in amazement. “It’s _Copper_! my lads! COPPER!!” “COPPER!!” “Yes, I reckon it is!—and the genuine metal, too! And the mountain is as full of it as an egg is of meat! Only melt down one of the rocks up there, and you’ll see how it will fly out!” To have stopped the spread of such information as this, would have surpassed the ingenuity of our clerical friend, who was opposed to the Magnetic Telegraph, as “a device of the devil.” There was a California excitement in a village, with California itself in their own mountain. _He_ would have been a lucky traveler, who could have had his horse shod for a guinea, or a bridle-rein mended for double the amount. “You see, my lads!” says Drawitwell, haranguing the crowd, “they are going to do the fair thing by us, they have bought the land, and are getting their act of incorporation ready, and we are all to have shares in it at a reasonable rate—and I reckon I’ll have a _few_, or money must be scarce in Fleeceington. There’ll be high times at the “Hawk and Buzzard”, _now_, I should say, when every man in this prosperous village can be an owner, for a small sum, in one of the richest mines on the face of the earth. You see it’s going to be most unconscionable high, too—it’s now twenty-two cents a pound—for the government is advertising for it in the newspapers—no doubt to make bullets with to match the infernal poisonous Mexicans. Gad, we’ll give the rascals a taste of their own physic, _now_, I reckon! And then don’t they make water-pipes with it now, and sheetings. And don’t they cover houses with it, and ships; and I guess the time is not far off when government will have her mint on this spot—and what’s to hinder us, _then_ from spending our own coppers, bran new, ha! ha! If any body here has got a farm for sale, I’m his man!”