"I'll tell you what I'll do," proffered the preacher. "Just to make the transaction binding, I'll sell you the claim for your next pan. Preaching is my business, not mining, you see. If you buy my claim, then nobody can accuse you of jumping it." "All right," accepted Terry. "Play fair, now," laughed the professor. "Take your dirt from a good rich spot." Spots looked mainly all alike to Terry. The hole where he had been digging was laying bare the hard rock, but he scraped up a quantity of dirt and loose splinters from a crevice---- "You're giving me principally rock, aren't you?" criticized the preacher, good-naturedly. "But let it go. I'll be game." However, as the pan cleared and Terry threw aside the splinters, they both exclaimed. Yellow was plainly visible--and moreover there was a blackish, cindery fragment the size of a crushed hazel-nut that glinted and weighed suspiciously as Terry lingered in the act of tossing it away also. "Here! Hold on!" And the preacher took it. "Nugget, isn't it? Fifteen or twenty dollars, I'll wager--and ten dollars more in flakes!" "That's a rich pan, boys, as I reckon," interrupted a voice, accompanied by crunching footsteps and a growl from Shep. The speaker was a miner over six feet tall and broad in proportion--a veritable giant of a man, in clothes as rough as the roughest, and with a revolver at his belt. In his black-whiskered face his eyes were small and deep-set, and close together, or as close as an enormous nose would permit. He was carrying a sack on his shoulder, which he deposited in order to investigate the pan. "Yes, sir-ee. A $40 pan, countin' the nugget. Does all your dirt run like that?" "No, sir; not yet," replied Terry. "But maybe it will when we sluice it." "Goin' to sluice, are you?" The giant's close-set little eyes roved about inquisitively. "This your claim, is it?" "Yes, sir. This and the next one." "Where'd you get that lucky pan o' dirt?" "From that hole." The giant strode up, carelessly poked about in the hole with his boot-toe, filtered some of the dirt through his fingers. "You're down to bed-rock already," he pronounced, returning. "I calkilate you may have struck a leetle pocket, but I don't count much on these shallow slopes. Some gold ketches, most of it's washed down. He your partner?" and he indicated the preacher. "No, sir. My partner's down to the store." "Older'n you?" "Some." "Waal," and the giant picked up his sack, "you'll have most of your work for nothin'. May strike an occasional pocket, an' may not. You've got one o' them pore locations. Mostly rock." With that he stumped on into the little draw down which flowed the side rivulet. Once he paused, to cast a glance behind at the stream and the waiting sluice; and then he disappeared around a shoulder up the draw.