“It’s ’cause this combines business with pleasure,” Mundon replied, as he neatly cut long fingers of potato, preparatory to frying them. “There’s twice as much fun to be had in doin’ the work you really like to do than there is in anythin’ that’s called ‘fun.’” “So I’ve found out.” “Fun’s like society. When it hunts you,--comes of its own accord, natural like,--it’s fine. But when you hunt it, it don’t amount to shucks.” “I guess you’re about right. I know I’ve never enjoyed anything in my life as I have this.” “’Cause why? ’Cause it’s work you like. That’s the reason. But it takes some folks a lifetime to find that out; and even then they don’t see it.” Ben was looking at the pile of rubble as if fascinated. “How much longer before we know?” “It won’t be long now, I reckon.” “O, Mundon, how can I ever wait!” On the following morning Mundon went down-town to make some necessary purchases. “I heard something to-day,” he said, when he returned, “that I wish I’d known in the beginnin’.” “What’s that?” inquired Ben. “Why, you see, when I was inquirin’ ’bout the price of quicksilver I run up against a man as knew all about this sort of thing--or said he did. ’Course, I didn’t tell him our plan; but what he says is needed fur it is a jigger.” “A what?” “A jigger machine. I got him to describe it, and I think I’ve got enough idee as to how it’s made to make one myself. He’d used one, up in Nevada, he said.” Mundon extracted a piece of chalk from his pocket, and on the board wall he drew a plan of the machine. “Your jigger is a box made of wood,” he said. “Well, really, it’s a tank--six foot long by four high. You fill it with water. At one end you have a tray filled with dirt and hung from a pole which is balanced by a weight at the end. T’ other end of the pole works up and down, like the handle of a bellus. The tray is dipped into the tank and all the loose dirt is washed out and the gold sinks to the bottom. That’s the coarse gold; you’ve got to ketch the fine gold on a table in the tank, under the tray. The waste dirt works inter the fur part of the tank. This man says--and he seems ter know what he’s talkin’ about--that you can’t git the val’able particles nohow, without a jigger.” “What luck you were in to meet him!” “Wasn’t I, though! I believe I’ll git the lumber,--it oughter be made out of new lumber,--and knock the thing together this afternoon,” Mundon replied, as he walked to the rear wall of the building. “Say, Ben,” he remarked, picking up a little of the earth from the floor and letting it sift through his fingers, “I think we oughter locate our find a little before we begin operations.” “What do you mean?” “Why, this here place is like a ruin deserted by the folks who used to live here. For instance,” he pointed to some grass-covered excavations, “these were the furnaces.”