At intervals the partners brought fresh records across the ridge to the abode of happiness, and the gratitude and contentment of Old Harmless seemed never to wane, although the wonderful ledge was no nearer discovery than it had been for twenty years. Sometimes they questioned him, curious as to his complacency. Themselves determined and persevering men, they yet knew that even to any persistence there is an end; but here was one who had for more than fifty years dreamed a dream, and worked to bring it to reality, with a courage that was undismayed by failure. “You beat me, Uncle Bill,” David declared, with a shake of his head. “I should think that by this time you’d be about ready to give up findin’ that ledge.” “Give up? Me give up? Why, son, I’m as positeeve there’s a ledge here as I am that I’m alive!” exclaimed Old Harmless, emphasizing his assertion with a slap of his gnarled hand on his lank and bony knee. “Spring’s a-comin’ ag’in, and when the rain washes off the dust and top layers, and shows the rocks in bright colors and marks out the formations, I’ll find her, all right! Yes, sir-ee! I’ll find her.” “But why ain’t you found it before this--in some of all the other springs when it rained, Uncle Bill?” David persisted, eying him shrewdly from beneath his thatch of red eyebrows. “One man cain’t look at every foot of all the hillsides, in one spring, or a dozen of ’em, kin he?” Old Harmless snorted as if derisive of the younger man’s sagacity. “I’m workin’ them hillsides by sections, I am. And--by Matildy Ann!--I don’t seem able ter do as much as I uster; but I’m pluggin’ along. I’ll git her yet!” “But you don’t seem to git nowhere and the----” “Git nowhere? Me? By heck! I’ve gotten farther’n most men. I’ve got one whole side of a gulch prospected. I’ve paid all my bills. I got grub enough right now ter run me for more’n a year. I got the finest cabin in the world. I ain’t never done a human bein’ any wrong in all my life. I ain’t never harmed a woman and--when I had money I eddicated two nevvies and a niece. I ain’t never spoke ill of no man. And if you think, son, that the Lord Almighty’s goin’ to let a feller like that down, you’re a damn fool. That ain’t the way He does things. No, sir-ee! He’s a pardner of mine, the Lord is, and I got an old book here what proves it!” And flurriedly, indignantly, he jumped to his feet, grabbed a battered old Bible from a shelf, and banged it down on the table in front of the skeptical David; banged it so hard that the tin dishes thereon rattled and danced and gyrated. The partners could not but respect his unbending faith. “David, you shut up!” growled Goliath, admonishingly, and scowling at his partner until his heavy black eyebrows met above the bridge of his high, thin nose.