That woke them up! Deacon Chick came down from the stand with a neat little box, and walked around among the people, showing off the gold. There were six nice, fat little nuggets--smooth, and yellow,--and delightful to handle. Each was about as big as a postage-stamp, and about half an inch thick. This was the gold which the Professor and Mr. Snider had extracted from the water, right there at Rogers's Island, by their secret, chemical process. It had been in tiny particles then, like dust, but they had sent it somewhere, and had it made into these nuggets,--plump and pleasing! They had a letter from someone in the Treasury to prove that it was solid and pure, and of the very best quality. No one needed the letter. The nuggets spoke for themselves,--they were so heavy! I held two of them, one in each hand, and weighed them. We all held one or two of them, and felt of them, and got a great deal of pleasure out of them. The people from Lanesport gathered around Deacon Chick, the men looked at the gold nuggets, weighed them, and smiled at each other. "Looks like the real stuff,--hey?" "Looks like it to ME, all right!" Everybody was interested, brightened up, happy and good-natured. They smiled and joked over the gold. Only one man seemed at all troubled in his mind. "There's jus' one thing," I heard him say to two other men, "there's jus' one thing that kinder worries me. If we go ahead and perdoose gold at this rate, we're goin' to flood the market! Yessir! Gold will get so common that the price of everything will go sky-high, an' that'll raise old Ned!" The other two looked pretty serious at this, and they started to discuss it. One of them thought they had better hold back most of the gold, "and only spring it on people a little at a tune." Suddenly Mr. Snider shouted: "Now, friends, if you please, we will go down to the wharf for the demonstration!" CHAPTER X MR. SNIDER It was hard to get them started--they were clustered so thick around the Deacon and his little box, all talking and laughing and discussing. Everyone was awake now, and animated,--if those six little yellow lumps of gold had appeared sooner, even the Hon. J. Harvey Bowditch couldn't have put the people to sleep. By sending the Deacon and the gold nuggets ahead, the procession was formed again for the wharf. The band stayed in the yard, playing tune after tune, and enjoying themselves immensely.