Mr. Emmett laid the rich specimen in Rayfield's outstretched hand and seated himself on the box, his hard, brown eyes glancing sharply now and then at Bill. Mr. Rayfield set down his cup of coffee and pursed his lips over the sample. His pleasant face glowed with professional admiration for a pretty bit of ore. "Yes-s--a mountain of that would insure a man against canned milk for life!" he chuckled. "If you had even a good vein of ore like that, Mr. Dale, your friends would need to pray that millions wouldn't make you money-mad." Doris held out her hand for it, and Mr. Rayfield smiled as he placed it in her palm. He did not say anything at all. Doris bent her brown head over the sample, then looked up quickly at Bill, her eyes wide and questioning. "O-oh--that's gold--_is_ that gold, Bill? All those yellow patches? It--it doesn't look just like pyrites----" "That's gold, Doris." To save his life Bill could not have kept the tenderness, the deep exultation out of his voice. "Gold! Why, it--it's almost _solid_ gold! Why, where----" Bill pulled himself together, laughed lazily and helped himself to the fried potatoes. "That's what drives prospectors crazy," he drawled. "Looking for more of the same. You keep that, Doris, if you like it. If I ever get hold of enough of that, I'll call it a mine." He laughed again disarmingly. "You know folks call me Hopeful Bill," he added quaintly. "You'd be Sure-thing Bill, if you ever found a mine of _that_." Mr. Rayfield's good eye dwelt hungrily upon the sample. "I suppose you're on the trail of it. You wouldn't be human if you weren't looking for more of the same. Well, I hope you locate it. I do, for a fact. I know I wouldn't rest until I located that." Bill's laugh betrayed nothing more than amusement, but his eyes forgot to twinkle. They were fixed rather intently on Mr. Rayfield's smooth, smiling face. "And when you had it located--then what would you do?" "Do?" Mr. Rayfield looked up, astonished. "What _would_ a man do, with a gold mine like that?" He returned to the spreading of peach preserves carefully between two hot cakes. "Organize a company and avail myself of the most modern methods of mining it. A good, clean corporation, Mr. Dale, is the most efficient, the most satisfactory methods I know of to-day. I certainly would organize at once and start out right to get the gold cheaply as possible and market the product as profitably as possible. There is no other intelligent method, these days." Mr. Emmett looked up dissentingly. "There you go on your hobby," he remarked. "The country's been done to death with wild-cat organizations that found a showing of mineral and hustled a corporation together. Look at the companies we've been sent to investigate, Walter! I should think that would sicken you of corporations."