Millia held the little rock in limp, unbelieving fingers. She saw the tiny sparkles in it; but--_gold!_ Visions of wealth and luxury and rest hurried through her brain, of Thanny looking happy and satisfied again, and of herself--plain, tired little Milly--wearing becoming clothes, and letting her roughened fingers grow smooth and white. Perhaps she would wear soft kid gloves; people did who had gold. Perhaps Thanny would too; Thanny's hands were slender and shapely. Luxuries read of and dreamed of appealed suddenly to her dazzled vision as possible, probable realities; people with gold on their farms had such things, of course. Nathan broke in upon her dreaming: "They found gold on a farm over in Bentley. Over Easton way, too. I guess it's all over these parts. Anyhow, it's on the Thacher farm!" He laughed jubilantly. Then he pocketed the little sparkling pebble, and said, briskly: "Don't you wait supper for me, Milly. I'm going down to the Forks to see Amasa Flagg. He can advise me some about working the vein. Amasa knows everything." Working the vein! How mysteriously important it sounded to Millia as she sat there, confused and awed! Could that be Thanny--_Thanny!_--swinging along with great springy strides, his shoulders unstooped, and importance and energy trailing in a little wake behind him? Would Amasa Flagg advise him to dig a mine--Millia's thoughts were couched in familiar words--and wear a candle in his hat, and burrow round in the earth in unsafe places? My goodness me!--would there be real miners round the place, perhaps wanting to board right in the family? In the midst of things Millia fell asleep. Nathan came home at night rather sobered, but still confident. There was gold there; how much nobody could prophesy till it could be looked into systematically, and that took money. There was no money on the Thacher place, and Nathan scorned any suggestion of borrowing. So the money must be earned. When that was done, he would sink a shaft and find his gold. When that was done--the money earned! Well, it looked a little appalling just at first; but Nathan Thacher had his grandfather Thacher's courage, once aroused, and he set his teeth for the struggle. "Crops," Amasa Flagg had said, succinctly. Nathan had thought of his barren waste fields, and gasped inwardly. Well, crops, then, if crops it must be; but what? "Corn," the oracle had declared. "There's money in sweet-corn, now 't them factories are runnin full tilt over to Easton. They want all they can git. You won't make no mistake if you plant your fields full of it, an' I calc'late you'll find that the nighest road to your gold-mine. I calc'late so. But you'll have to hustle considerable, an' make your hoe fly real stiddy. You can't make a corn crop payin' without you do everything thorough. You've got to hustle, my boy, early 'n' late!"