The ice melted, he added more, and when the tin boiler was half full of water he stepped outside and carried in a piece of old tarpaulin onto which he had shoveled a hundred pounds or so of gravel from the morning’s digging. The gravel was frozen into a solid mass and he set it beside the stove while he stripped off his clothing and took a bath, using the water sparingly. Dressing himself, he proceeded to wash his discarded underclothing, shirt and socks in the boiler. Hanging these garments on the drying rack, he produced a pan and when the gravel had thawed sufficiently, dumped in a batch and filled the pan from his wash water. Squatting upon the floor close beside the lamp which he moved to the edge of the table, he began to work the pan with a peculiar circular motion that threw the lighter dross splashing over the edge onto the floor. The coarser gravel he removed with his hands, tossing it aside. As the gravel and water lowered in the pan he examined the residue carefully until with a final flirt he ridded the pan of the last remaining bit of muddy water. Then he turned the contents onto a piece of wrapping paper spread out to receive it, and sorted the gold from the remaining dross. Flour gold, dust, and nuggets, that single pan weighed in at one hundred and forty dollars! MacShane rose, carried the tarpaulin with the remaining gravel out to the dump and with the water that remained in the boiler he washed his floor. Crossing to his bunk he withdrew from beneath the blankets a buckskin pouch and pouring its contents onto the paper, sat for a while and looked at the yellow pile. He consulted a memorandum book, and added a notation. “That makes close to eight thousand dollars out of the test pans,” he figured, “an’ at that rate there’s over a hundred thousand on the dump, an’ God knows how much on down. This is sure some strike! Wait till the news of it gets outside! I would like to have a dance or two. I guess most of the girls have hit the new camp by now. This new strike sure raised hell with Circle an’ Fortymile!” As the words unbidden expressed his trend of thought, the man’s fingers abstractedly separated the larger nuggets from the little pile of gold. He returned a handful to the sack and dumped the coarse gold and the dust in after them. Then he prepared his supper and as he ate it he cooked up a meal of tallow and rice for his seven dogs.