He whirled the pan with great care, and the heavy sand gradually disappeared. Then the boys looked at each other and shook hands. In the bottom of the pan lay several yellow flecks. Gold without a doubt, but not much of it. As a matter of fact, their discovery amounted to very little. Scarcely a stream in the Rocky Mountains, from Central America to Cape Lisburne, but in it you may find these occasional flecks of gold. To find it in paying quantities is altogether another matter, as many a gray-bearded prospector has learned after years of toil and rough life. But the boys were too young and inexperienced to realize this. They thought that fortune was verily within their grasp. They prospected up and down the stream, and never realized that they had not eaten dinner and were very hungry. Yet wherever they went they found nothing but these faint prospects, and after long hours, fatigue and hunger finally asserted themselves and they started back for camp. As they tramped, weary and disappointed, they came round a bend in the creek and Joe’s eyes lighted up. There on the water’s edge, strolling along a clay bottom thinly strewn with micaceous sand, were three ptarmigans, picking up bits of gravel for the good of their crops, as such birds do. They looked large and plump in the eyes of two hungry boys. “Lie low,” whispered Joe, “and we’ll have one of those birds.” They watched them eagerly from behind a sheltering mound on the bank. The birds pecked leisurely for a while, then went toward the bank and settled contentedly beneath some dwarf willows in the sun. Paddle in hand, Joe slipped noiselessly forward, got behind the clump of willows, crept round it, and with a sudden blow of the paddle laid out a ptarmigan. The others flew. “There!” said Joe. “Here’s a good bite for dinner. Let’s hurry back.” With renewed energy they hustled back to the camp, three quarters of a mile away, and soon had the ptarmigan broiling over a good fire. They made some rude flapjacks with the remnants of their spoiled flour, and ate the bird pretty nearly bones and all. “There,” said Harry, “I feel better. Pity we did not have the rifle along. We could have had the two others. However, they’re up there somewhere and will do for another meal. Wonder what these fellows find to eat.” He picked up the crop of the ptarmigan and opened it with his knife. “Buds, bugs, and gravel,” he said. “Not a very tempting diet, but we may have to come to it ourselves. Hello, what’s this?” In the gravel in the bird’s crop were three or four pebbles, not much larger than grains of rice, but flattened and yellow. They examined these with growing excitement. “It’s gold!” exclaimed Harry. “It’s gold! we’ve been prospecting in the wrong places.” “I should say we had,” said Joe, giggling somewhat hysterically; “but we can’t kill ptarmigans enough to make a gold mine.”