"Oh, they were some distance out yet," smiled Mr. Richardson. "But they had spanking good teams and were pushing right through. They'll----" "Ha, ha! Watch our old friend Horace! He acts like an expert," laughed Mr. Villard. For Mr. Greeley, after having deliberately selected the packed dirt from several of the riffles at the middle of the sluice, was proceeding to wash his pan at the ditch. "Why, His Honor might have been in the diggin's all his life!" praised Pat. "Sure, isn't he a Californy Forty-niner?" Mr. Greeley was not so swift in his motions as a skilled prospector, but he evidently knew the correct method. He dipped, and tilted the pan, and twirled out the dirt and water; and peered, and dipped and twirled again. Each time that he peered he seemed to be more interested, and his smooth, chubby face grew redder. "Have you struck it rich, Mr. Greeley?" "Upon my word!" And straightening, he returned with the pan held close under his nose. "Marvelous! If this is gold--and I judge that it is--these are very rich diggings indeed." They all crowded forward to inspect the pan. The bottom of it was absolutely yellow! "Hurrah for Mr. Greeley!" congratulated the other journalists, and hands patted him roundly on the back. "Gold!" proclaimed Pat. "Faith, an' if 'tain't a twinty dollar pan I'll ate it. Wance I washed out siventeen dollars myself, but never a pan like that from mere a few riffles. Keep it, Your Honor. Would ye like to try ag'in?" "Oh, no, no," declined Editor Greeley, considerably flustered as he painstakingly transferred the flakes and dust to his buckskin sack. "This is proof enough. Now I have worked with my own hands and seen the results with my own eyes--I have the results in my very pocket! Nobody can gainsay the richness of these new Western mines, and the truth shall be announced to the world as far as my paper can carry it." He smiled boyishly on Terry. "I beat you, my son, didn't I? Well, well!" "This is one of the Pike's Peak Limited boys, Mr. Greeley," explained Journalist Richardson. "You remember a party of emigrants on the trail sent word by us to them, in case we ran across them at Cherry Creek or elsewhere." "Yes, yes. That is so," and the great Horace Greeley extended his hand to Terry. "You must be Terry, then--the son of that Mr. and Mrs. Richards in one of the wagons." "Yes, sir," answered Terry, wondering how Mr. Greeley could remember. "They're my father and mother. The other outfit lived on the next ranch to us in the Big Blue Valley." "And they had another boy, and a little girl beside," said Mr. Greeley. "That's good. I'm glad to see young blood entering this vast new country of the United States. When I return to New York I think I shall print as a motto: 'Go West, young man; go West.'"