“I’ll bet a hen worth fifty dollars that Hank Neighbors--that big cuss leanin’ up ag’inst the bar--knows who struck it, and whereabouts it’s located,” was one of the remarks that he overheard; and, glancing back from the door, he saw the man to whom the reference was made--a tall, loose-jointed man, with deep-set, gloomy eyes and a curling brown beard that masked something more than half of his face. Upon leaving the hotel, Bromley led the way down Harrison Avenue toward a restaurant not far from the stable where their outfit waited for them. With the mining excitement now at its most populous height, and the sidewalks filled with restless throngs of men, there was curiously little street disorder; this though the saloons, dance-halls and gaming rooms of a wide-open mining-camp city were running full blast, their garishly lighted entrances lacking even the customary slatted swing doors of concealment. For the greater part, the crowds were good-natured and boisterously hilarious; and where the not too infrequent drunken celebrator came weaving along, the sidewalk jostlers gave him room, shouting such encouragements as “Walk a chalk, old boy!” or “Go it while you’re young--when you’re old you can’t!” One of the staggerers who bumped against Philip and his partner was repeating monotonously: “’Rah for Jimmie Garfield--canal boy, b’gosh--nexsht presh’dent!” an exotic injection of the politics of a campaign year into an atmosphere as remote as that of another planet from matters political or governmental. In the side-street restaurant Philip chose a table in a corner and sat with his back to the wall so that he could see the length and breadth of the room. The hour was late, and the tables were no more than half filled; but where there were groups of two or more, there was eager talk. “It’s here, too,” Philip commented in low tones, indicating the eager and evidently excited groups at the other tables. “It is everywhere, just as I told you. The town is sizzling with it. When I was a little tad I used to sit goggle-eyed listening to the tales of a cousin of ours who was one of the returned California Forty-niners. I remember he said it was that way out there. A camp would be booming along fine, with everybody happy and contented, until word of a new strike blew in. Then the whole outfit would go wild and make a frantic dash for the new diggings. It’s lucky nobody has spotted us for the discoverers. We’d be mobbed.” “I wish I could be sure we haven’t been spotted,” said Philip, a wave of misgiving suddenly submerging him. “I think we are safe enough, thus far,” Bromley put in, adding: “But it was a mighty lucky thing that we came in after dark last night with those sacks of samples. If it had been daytime----”