The boy’s eyes sparkled with delight, but he only nodded. He was thinking very hard. Here, evidently, was just the man he needed. He had seen an arastra at work in one of his father’s mines, but he knew nothing about the practical details necessary to the construction of one. Should he offer to employ this man, or should he offer him a percentage of the profits? The latter proposition seemed the more feasible; for, although it might cost him more in the end, he had no ready money to pay out in wages. His mind was quickly made up. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Mundon. If you’ll help me with the scheme,--I don’t mean just by talking, but with day’s work,--I’ll give you one third of the net proceeds.” “That’s a square offer,--seein’ as how I aint got nothin’ to put in,--and I’ll take it. I’m out of a job just now, through waitin’ fur a friend from Australia. I expect he’ll be here in a month more,--or mebbe ’twill be several,--and then we’ll try Colorado together. I’d reely like this work to fill up the time. There’s something sort of venturesome ’bout it, that ’peals to me.” “And I’m very glad to get you to help me,” Ben replied; “I’ve been worrying a good deal since I bought it.” “I’d thought of it a little, myself; and I come out here to-day ’cause I kinder thought I’d find you a-hangin’ ’round somewheres near this place.” “Let’s go in and look over the ground,” said Ben. They entered the inclosure and Mundon selected the most suitable place for the arastra. “The next question is, where am I to get the money for the things we need?” Ben remarked. “I could get them on credit, I think, from an old mining friend of my father’s; but I hate to go in debt, especially on an uncertainty. I’ve been thinking about offering him a small percentage in exchange for the materials. Then, it would be his own risk whether he got his money or not.” “Pshaw! You don’t want to give away any more percentages. A man’s got to go in debt--more or less--in ’most every business. Besides, your money’s right in sight, as it were.” “No, it isn’t,” Ben stoutly replied. “That’s just the trouble; I think it is, but I don’t know it. What right have I to promise to pay a man out of my thinking?” “There ain’t any other way. You’ve just got to do it; or borrow the money from some one else, which amounts to the same thing.” He paused for a reply, but as he noticed Ben’s hesitation he hastened to divert him from his weighing of right and wrong. “I recollec’ a chimney on one of Senator Fair’s mills up in Nevada, that yielded a pile of gold and silver when ’twas broke up. Why, they found one solid lump of silver half as big as my fist, in a crack in the masonry. You see, the gold what stays in the furnaces, works right into the mortar and bricks in a dust so fine you can’t see it. That’s why you need a ’rastra. But, sometimes, fine particles of precip’tated silver’ll get blown into a crack, until there’s a big lump formed.”