The momentary shock sobered him. But the old dread of that felt presence no longer assailed him as something he must combat by feigning unconsciousness. The unreasoning impression that Steve Carson--the mind of him--was there just behind his shoulder, watching and sharing in his delight, persisted nevertheless. Gary caught himself wondering if the thing was really only a prank of his imagination. Feeling a bit foolish, but choosing to indulge the whimsy, he stood up and turned deliberately, the pan held out before him. “Steve Carson, if dead people go on living and thinking, and if you really are hanging around just out of sight but watching the game, I’m here to say that I hope you’re glad I found this vein. And I want to tell you right now that if there’s any money to be made out of it, it’s going to the finest, squarest little girl in the world. So if there is such a thing as a spirit, just take it from me everything’s going to be on the square.” He carried the pan up to the cabin and carefully rinsed the gold down into a jelly glass. He made no apology to himself for the little speech to a man dead and gone these five years. Having made himself as clear on the subject as was diplomatic--supposing Steve Carson’s spirit had been present and could hear--he felt a certain relief and could lay the subject aside and devote himself to the fascination of hunting the gold out of the hills where it had lain buried for ages. It occurred to him that he might find some particularly rich specimens, mortar them by hand and pan them for Patricia. A wedding ring made from the first gold taken and panned by hand--the hand of Gary Marshall--from “The Pat Connolly” mine, appealed to him irresistibly. Before he had mortared a lump of porphyry the size of a pigeon’s egg, Gary had resolved to pan enough gold for that very purpose. He pictured himself pulling the ring from his vest pocket while the minister waited. He experienced a prophetic thrill of ecstasy when he slipped the ring upon Patricia’s finger. The dreamed sentence, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” intoned by an imaginary minister, thrilled him to the soul. _Pung, pung, pung!_ It wouldn’t take so very long, if he mortared rock evenings, say, instead of killing time minute by minute playing solitaire with the deck of cards Waddell had thumbed before him. _Pung, pung, pung!_ He could mortar the quartz in the evenings and pan it in the morning before he went to work. _Pung, pung, pung, pung!_ He would hunt up a cow’s horn and fix it as he had seen old prospectors do, so that he could blow the sand from the panned gold and carry it unmixed to the jeweler. _Pung, pung!_ The porphyry sample was fine as corn meal under the miniature stamp-mill of Gary’s pounding.