“They’re heaps of waste, most likely. Somethin’ ’s ben scratched into the wood. Let’s see what it is.” They carefully examined the board, and Ben deciphered the inscription, “_Waste Bullion_.” “Just think!” he cried, “that old Madge has let this pile of stuff that’s one third solid silver, maybe, stay here all these years! And Mr. Fish, close as he is, too,” he added. “It’s awfully funny!” “It ain’t funny that Fish didn’t do nothin’ with it, ’cause he’s the kind that just collects rents and forecloses mortgages. He wouldn’t put up a cent in any venture like this; he’d call it oncertain. But old Madge is a born miner. Well, it is funny. He’ll be wild.” “There used to be a shed inside the old fence, in a sort of an outside yard,” Ben remarked, “but they both fell down years ago.” “That so?” Mundon replied, as he stooped and carefully examined the ground. “Yes, here’s the posts the shed rested on. We’ll excavate five or six feet deep here, on the site of the old shed. It’s bound to pay us fur our trouble.” “After it’s been all these years on the open beach?” “What’s that got to do with it? Nobody’s ever mined here. It stands to reason that they’d hev stored more val’able stuff in the shed than they would in the open. And there’s the signboard, a-tellin’ us that these dumps are waste bullion.” During the weeks that followed their return to their claim the partners worked industriously. They sifted the result of their labors in three dumps, graded according to value. The first was coarse base bullion, which assayed at two hundred dollars a ton. One piece, the largest, weighed about twenty pounds; the smallest pieces were the size of peas. The second pile consisted of fine bullion, its component particles ranging in size from a pea to a pinhead. This assayed at one hundred and fifty dollars a ton. A third pile averaged from seventy-five dollars to one hundred dollars a ton. The total product of this, representing a week’s work, they estimated to be about seventeen hundred dollars. The site of the old shed was excavated, and water was brought to the spot in a flume; for Mundon thought best to wash the ground in a rocker before putting it through the “jigger.” The result amply repaid them for their trouble. “This beats me! Rockin’ on the beach of San Francisco and makin’ our two and three hundred dollars a day,” said Mundon, one day as they were digging several feet below the surface. [Illustration: “_‘Rockin’ on the beach of San Francisco and makin’ our two and three hundred a day,’ said Mundon._”] “It beats anything I ever heard of,” Ben replied; “but I’m willing it should.” Ben worked so hard during the day that he was too tired when night came to do anything but go to bed as quickly as possible. One Sunday afternoon he paid a visit to Beth. He had not seen her for some time, and was anxious to know what progress she was making at school. She saw him coming and came running to meet him. “Will you walk out to the Point, Ben?”