"I’ve only once been down your way," remarked Judge Simmons as they were seated at table, "and that was some years ago, before you had made that corner of the world a household word. Everyone knows the Good Hope silver mine and its apparently exhaustless resources, but I wish I could locate it better in my own mind. I don’t seem able to fit it in with what I remember of the place. I went with a nice young fellow named Barker who was prospecting then in those parts, and he staked out a claim somewhere thereabouts. I recollect he called it Wild Goat Gully. I’ve quite lost sight of him since, and have never been up there again, but I fancy he didn’t strike it rich, or we should have heard of it before now." "I was told that he went completely to the dogs, and was at last drowned when crossing one of the big rivers," replied Mr. Field. "He certainly made nothing out of his Gully, so far as I heard, and the very name he gave it has died out." "One peculiarity about it struck me much at the time," remarked the judge. "There was a high precipice bounding it on one side, with a great orange streak right across it as if it had been daubed on with a brush. Some geological freak, I suppose." "Why, how funny!" exclaimed Julius, who had been sitting silently listening to the conversation. "That’s just like the Good Hope cliff. It looks exactly as if some enormous giant had thrown his pot of yellow paint at the rock." "Strange," said the judge, glancing up at Mr. Field, "I heard there wasn’t another formation like it in the whole country." "What nonsense!" ejaculated Mr. Field testily. "I’ve explored every part of the district for miles round, and know every inch of it well, and I could show you half a dozen valleys where there were similar rocks, any one of which might be Wild Goat Gully." "I don’t think there are, father," chimed in Julius, "for I asked old Joe the trapper, who has lived there all his life, and he told me just the same as Judge Simmons. He said it was ’unique,’ and I remember when I asked you what that was, you said it meant there wasn’t another like it in the world." "If you contradict me in this way, Julius, you may just leave the room," said his father in an angry tone. "I won’t have lies told at my table, even by my own son. Do you hear me, Julius? Be off with you this instant, or I’ll give you a thrashing that you won’t soon forget." "It’s quite true, father," stoutly asserted the boy. "You know you’ve often said to me that no one could equal the Good Hope mine any more than they could match the yellow splash on its cliff." A box on the ears was Mr. Field’s only reply, as he grasped the lad by the arm and hustled him out of the door.