Longstreet came on down the trail jauntily. Sanchia, first to reach him, passed her arm through his and held resolutely to his side. As they came close and into the lamp-light from the cabin door their two faces hid nothing of their two emotions. Longstreet's was one of whole-hearted triumph; Sanchia's of shrewdness and determination. 'Now,' cried Longstreet ringingly, 'who says that I didn't know what I was talking about!' It was a challenge of the victor, not a mere question. Before any other reply came Sanchia's answer. 'Dear friend,' she told him hurriedly, 'I always had faith in you. When others doubted, I was sure. And now I rejoice in your happiness as----' 'Papa!' warned Helen. She ran forward to him. 'Remember and be careful!' Longstreet went into the cabin. The others followed him. Sanchia did not release his arm, though she saw and understood what lay in Helen's look and Howard's. The main issue had arrived and Sanchia meant to make the most of it. Longstreet put down his short-handled pick. Howard noted the act and observed, though the impression at the time was relegated to the outer fringes of his concentrated thought, that the rough head of the instrument and even a portion of the handle looked rusty. Longstreet removed from his shoulders his canvas specimen-bag. Plainly, it was heavy; there were a number of samples in it, some as small as robins' eggs, one the size of a man's two fists. He was lifting the bag to dump its contents out upon the table when suddenly Howard pushed by Sanchia and snatched the thing from Longstreet's hands. Longstreet stared at him in astonishment; Sanchia caught at his coat. 'Just a minute,' said Howard hastily. Even Helen wondered as he turned and bolted out through the door and sped up the trail toward the spring. Longstreet looked from the departing figure to his daughter and then to Sanchia, frankly bewildered. Then all went to the door. In a moment, Howard returned, the bag hanging limp over his arm, his two hands filled with the fragments of rock which glistened in the lamp-light. 'I washed them off,' he said lightly. 'If there really is gold here we can see it better with all the loose dirt off, can't we?' He put them down on the table and stood back, watching Sanchia keenly. The fine restraint which, in her many encounters with the unexpected, Sanchia had been trained so long and so well to maintain, was gone now in a flash. Her eyes shone; a rich colour flooded her face; she could not stop her involuntary action until she had literally thrown herself upon the bits of quartz, snatching them up. For they were streaked and seamed and pitted with gold, such ore as she had never seen. The avarice gleaming in her eyes for that one instant during which she was thrown off her guard was akin to a light of madness.