“What is it, Jason?” she asked. But of herself she knew the answer. He untied a string, and, dipping in his fingers, showed her a fine yellow metallic trickle. “Gold dust, two tumblers full,” he replied. “We used to measure it that way--a pinch a dollar, teaspoonful to the ounce, a wineglass holds a hundred, and a tumbler a thousand dollars.” She was breathless before the small shapeless pouch that held such a staggering amount. He laughed. “Why, Olive, it's nothing at all. I just brought it like that so you could see how we carried it in California. We are all rich now, Olive--the Burrages, and you're one, and the Staneses. I have close to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” This sum was little more to her than a fable, a thing beyond the scope of her comprehension; but the two thousand dollars before her gaze was a miracle made manifest. There it was to study, feel; subconsciously she inserted her hand in the bag, into the cold, smooth particles. “A hundred and fifty thousand,” he repeated; “but if you think I didn't work for it, if you suppose I picked it right out of a pan on the river bars, why--why, you are wrong.” Words failed him to express the erroneousness of such conclusions. “I slaved like a Mexican,” he added; “and in bad luck almost to the end.” She sat and gazed at him with an easier air and a growing interest, her hands clasped in her lap. “What I didn't know when I left Cottarsport was wonderful. “Why, take the mining,” he said with a gesture; “I mean the bowl mining at first... just the heavy work in it killed off most of the prospectors--all day with a big iron pan, half full of clay and gravel, sloshing about in those rivers. And maybe you'd work a month without a glimmer, waking wet and cold under the sierras, whirling the pan round and round; and maybe when you had the iron cleared out with a magnet, and dropped in the quicksilver, what gold was there wouldn't amalgam. I can tell you, Olive, only the best, or the hardest, came through.” He produced a blunt, tapering cigar and lighted it expansively. “A lonely and dangerous business: every one carried his dust right on his body, and there were plenty would risk a shot at a miner coming back solitary with his donkey and his pile. It got better when the new methods came, and we used a rocker-hollowed out of a log. Then four of us went in partnership--one to dig the gravel, one to carry it to the cradle, another to keep it rocking, and the last to pour in the water. Then we drawed off the gold and sand through a plug hole.