A miner’s rocker is ingenious in its simplicity. It is generally a wooden box, having a rough sieve-like hopper at the top, and an inclined plane of canvas within. You shovel the sand into the hopper, then pour in water and rock gently. The water washes the sand down along the inclined plane, where riffles catch the heavy gold, while the sand washes over and out at the bottom. It is a simple matter to work this, though, like the gold pan, its perfect manipulation requires much skill and judgment. At the end of an hour the boys made their first clean-up, and were delighted at the amount of gold that lay yellow in the riffles. They worked thus with great glee till Blenship returned, long past the supper hour. He inspected the results, and even he was roused to enthusiasm at the quantity of gold that they had. “I declare,” said he, “it’s about ten ounces, and most all small nuggets. Probably as much more fine gold went right through. You’ve been rocking too hard. A rocker is like a woman; you’ve got to humor her or she won’t work well. Let me try the tailings.” He panned the heap of sand that had gone through the rocker, and showed them the fine gold still left in it. “You only got about half on’t,” he said. “Geewhillikins! but that little pond is a pocket for you. There’s a young million right in a few rods, or I miss my guess. I’ve got some rich spots upstream myself, but they ain’t in it with this one. I’d like to try some sluicing on that. It would be dead easy. You could dam the creek at that little gap up above and get at all this clay bottom, and have plenty of water for the sluice. How would it do for me to go into partnership with you boys for a time, and we try this thing? Reckon we could fix up some kind of a trade, couldn’t we?” “What do you think?” said Joe to Harry. “I think,” answered Harry, “that Mr. Blenship is more than kind to us. I for one will heartily accede to any agreement that he wants to make.” “And so will I,” Joe assented warmly. “Listen to that, now,” said Blenship in mock despair. “Here I was planning to drive a hard bargain with them, and they put me on my honor. Anything I want to do! Humph! Well, this is what I propose. Suppose we get to work and sluice here at Partridge Bend. You give me a hundred dollars a day every day of actual sluicing, as general manager; you take the rest. If you ain’t suited at the end of the first three days, we’ll call the bargain off.” “Agreed!” said Harry. “Agreed!” said Joe, and they set to work.