Mr. Jack Fleming was indeed “not much of a miner.” He and his partners—both as young, hopeful, and inefficient as himself—had for three months worked a claim in a mountain mining settlement which yielded them a certain amount of healthy exercise, good-humored grumbling, and exalted independence. To dig for three or four hours in the morning, smoke their pipes under a redwood-tree for an hour at noon, take up their labors again until sunset, when they “washed up” and gathered sufficient gold to pay for their daily wants, was, without their seeking it, or even knowing it, the realization of a charming socialistic ideal which better men than themselves had only dreamed of. Fleming fell back into this refined barbarism, giving little thought to his woodland experience, and no revelation of it to his partners. He had transacted their business at the mining town. His deviations en route were nothing to them, and small account to himself.

The third day after his return he was lying under a redwood when his partner approached him.

“You aren't uneasy in your mind about any unpaid bill—say a wash bill—that you're owing?”

“Why?”

“There's a big nigger woman in camp looking for you; she's got a folded account paper in her hand. It looks deucedly like a bill.”

“There must be some mistake,” suggested Fleming, sitting up.

“She says not, and she's got your name pat enough! Faulkner” (his other partner) “headed her straight up the gulch, away from camp, while I came down to warn you. So if you choose to skedaddle into the brush out there and lie low until we get her away, we'll fix it!”

“Nonsense! I'll see her.”

His partner looked aghast at this temerity, but Fleming, jumping to his feet, at once set out to meet his mysterious visitor. This was no easy matter, as the ingenious Faulkner was laboriously leading his charge up the steep gulch road, with great politeness, but many audible misgivings as to whether this was not “Jack Fleming's day for going to Jamestown.”

He was further lightening the journey by cheering accounts of the recent depredations of bears and panthers in that immediate locality. When overtaken by Fleming he affected a start of joyful surprise, to conceal the look of warning which Fleming did not heed,—having no eyes but for Faulkners companion. She was a very fat negro woman, panting with exertion and suppressed impatience. Fleming's heart was filled with compunction.

“Is you Marse Fleming?” she gasped.

“Yes,” said Fleming gently. “What can I do for you?”

“Well! Ye kin pick dis yar insek, dis caterpillier,” she said, pointing to Faulkner, “off my paf. Ye kin tell dis yar chipmunk dat when he comes to showin' me mule tracks for b'ar tracks, he's barkin' up de wrong tree! Dat when he tells me dat he sees panfers a-promenadin' round in de short grass or hidin' behime rocks in de open, he hain't talkin' to no nigger chile, but a growed woman! Ye kin tell him dat Mammy Curtis lived in de woods afo' he was born, and hez seen more b'ars and mountain lyuns dan he hez hairs in his mustarches.”

The word “Mammy” brought a flash of recollection to Fleming.

“I am very sorry,” he began; but to his surprise the negro woman burst into a good-tempered laugh.

“All right, honey! S'long's you is Marse Fleming and de man dat took dat 'ar pan offer Tinka de odder day, I ain't mindin' yo' frens' bedevilments. I've got somefin fo' you, yar, and a little box,” and she handed him a folded paper.

Fleming felt himself reddening, he knew not why, at which Faulkner discreetly but ostentatiously withdrew, conveying to his other partner painful conviction that Fleming had borrowed a pan from a traveling tinker, whose negro wife was even now presenting a bill for the same, and demanding a settlement. Relieved by his departure, Fleming hurriedly tore open the folded paper. It was a letter written upon a leaf torn out of an old account book, whose ruled lines had undoubtedly given his partners the idea that it was a bill. Fleming hurriedly read the following, traced with a pencil in a schoolgirl's hand:—

Mr. J. FLEMING.

Dear Sir,—After you went away that day I took that pan you brought back to mix a batch of bread and biscuits. The next morning at breakfast dad says: “What's gone o' them thar biscuits—my teeth is just broke with them—they're so gritty—they're abominable! What's this?” says he, and with that he chucks over to me two or three flakes of gold that was in them. You see what had happened, Mr. Fleming, was this! You had better luck than you was knowing of! It was this way! Some of the gold you washed had got slipped into the sides of the pan where it was broke, and the sticky dough must have brought it out, and I kneaded them up unbeknowing. Of course I had to tell a wicked lie, but “Be ye all things to all men,” says the Book, and I thought you ought to know your good luck, and I send mammy with this and the gold in a little box. Of course, if dad was a hunter of Mammon and not of God's own beasts, he would have been mighty keen about finding where it came from, but he allows it was in the water in our near spring. So good-by. Do you care for your ring now as much as you did?

Yours very respectfully,

KATINKA JALLINGER.

As Mr. Fleming glanced up from the paper, mammy put a small cardboard box in his hand. For an instant he hesitated to open it, not knowing how far mammy was intrusted with the secret. To his great relief she said briskly: “Well, dar! now dat job's done gone and often my han's, I allow to quit and jest get off dis yer camp afo' ye kin shake a stick. So don't tell me nuffin I ain't gotter tell when I goes back.”

Fleming understood. “You can tell her I thank her—and—I'll attend to it,” he said vaguely; “that is—I”—

“Hold dar! that's just enuff, honey—no mo'! So long to ye and youse folks.”

He watched her striding away toward the main road, and then opened the box.

It contained three flakes of placer or surface gold, weighing in all about a quarter of an ounce. They could easily have slipped into the interstices of the broken pan and not have been observed by him. If this was the result of the washing of a single pan—and he could now easily imagine that other flakes might have escaped—what—But he stopped, dazed and bewildered at the bare suggestion. He gazed upon the vanishing figure of “mammy.” Could she—could Katinka—have the least suspicion of the possibilities of this discovery? Or had Providence put the keeping of this secret into the hands of those who least understood its importance? For an instant he thought of running after her with a word of caution; but on reflection he saw that this might awaken her suspicion and precipitate a discovery by another.

His only safety for the present was silence, until he could repeat his experiment. And that must be done quickly.

How should he get away without his partners' knowledge of his purpose? He was too loyal to them to wish to keep this good fortune to himself, but he was not yet sure of his good fortune. It might be only a little “pocket” which he had just emptied; it might be a larger one which another trial would exhaust.

He had put up no “notice;” he might find it already in possession of Katinka's father, or any chance prospector like himself. In either case he would be covered with ridicule by his partners and the camp, or more seriously rebuked for his carelessness and stupidity. No! he could not tell them the truth; nor could he lie. He would say he was called away for a day on private business.

Luckily for him, the active imagination of his partners was even now helping him. The theory of the “tinker” and the “pan” was indignantly rejected by his other partner. His blushes and embarrassment were suddenly remembered by Faulkner, and by the time he reached his cabin, they had settled that the negro woman had brought him a love letter! He was young and good looking; what was more natural than that he should have some distant love affair?

His embarrassed statement that he must leave early the next morning on business that he could not at PRESENT disclose was considered amply confirmatory, and received with maliciously significant acquiescence. “Only,” said Faulkner, “at YOUR age, sonny,”—he was nine months older than Fleming,—“I should have gone TO-NIGHT.” Surely Providence was favoring him!

He was off early the next morning. He was sorely tempted to go first to the cabin, but every moment was precious until he had tested the proof of his good fortune.

It was high noon before he reached the fringe of forest. A few paces farther and he found the spring and outcrop. To avert his partners' suspicions he had not brought his own implements, but had borrowed a pan, spade, and pick from a neighbor's claim before setting out. The spot was apparently in the same condition as when he left it, and with a beating heart he at once set to work, an easy task with his new implements. He nervously watched the water overflow the pan of dirt at its edges until, emptied of earth and gravel, the black sand alone covered the bottom. A slight premonition of disappointment followed; a rich indication would have shown itself before this! A few more workings, and the pan was quite empty except for a few pin-points of “color,” almost exactly the quantity he found before. He washed another pan with the same result. Another taken from a different level of the outcrop yielded neither more nor less! There was no mistake: it was a failure! His discovery had been only a little “pocket,” and the few flakes she had sent him were the first and last of that discovery.

He sat down with a sense of relief; he could face his partners again without disloyalty; he could see that pretty little figure once more without the compunction of having incurred her father's prejudices by locating a permanent claim so near his cabin. In fact, he could carry out his partners' fancy to the letter!

He quickly heaped his implements together and turned to leave the wood; but he was confronted by a figure that at first he scarcely recognized. Yet—it was Katinka! the young girl of the cabin, who had sent him the gold. She was dressed differently—perhaps in her ordinary every-day garments—a bright sprigged muslin, a chip hat with blue ribbons set upon a coil of luxurious brown hair. But what struck him most was that the girlish and diminutive character of the figure had vanished with her ill-fitting clothes; the girl that stood before him was of ordinary height, and of a prettiness and grace of figure that he felt would have attracted anywhere. Fleming felt himself suddenly embarrassed,—a feeling that was not lessened when he noticed that her pretty lip was compressed and her eyebrows a little straightened as she gazed at him.

“Ye made a bee line for the woods, I see,” she said coldly. “I allowed ye might have been droppin' in to our house first.”

“So I should,” said Fleming quickly, “but I thought I ought to first make sure of the information you took the trouble to send me.” He hesitated to speak of the ill luck he had just experienced; he could laugh at it himself—but would she?

“And ye got a new pan?” she said half poutingly.

Here seemed his opportunity. “Yes, but I'm afraid it hasn't the magic of yours. I haven't even got the color. I believe you bewitched your old pan.”

Her face flushed a little and brightened, and her lip relaxed with a smile. “Go 'long with yer! Ye don't mean to say ye had no luck to-day?”

“None—but in seeing you.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Ye see, I said all 'long ye weren't much o' a miner. Ye ain't got no faith. Ef ye had as much as a grain o' mustard seed, ye'd remove mountains; it's in the Book.”

“Yes, and this mountain is on the bedrock, and my faith is not strong enough,” he said laughingly. “And then, that would be having faith in Mammon, and you don't want me to have THAT.”

She looked at him curiously. “I jest reckon ye don't care a picayune whether ye strike anything or not,” she said half admiringly.

“To please you I'll try again, if you'll look on. Perhaps you'll bring me luck as you did before. You shall take the pan. I will fill it and you shall wash it out. You'll be my MASCOT.”

She stiffened a little at this, and then said pertly, “Wot's that?”

“My good fairy.”

She smiled again, this time with a new color in her pale face. “Maybe I am,” she said, with sudden gravity.

He quickly filled the pan again with soil, brought it to the spring, and first washed out the greater bulk of loose soil. “Now come here and kneel down beside me,” he said, “and take the pan and do as I show you.”

She knelt down obediently. Suddenly she lifted her little hand with a gesture of warning. “Wait a minit—jest a minit—till the water runs clear again.”

The pool had become slightly discolored from the first washing.

“That makes no difference,” he said quickly.

“Ah! but wait, please!” She laid her brown hand upon his arm; a pleasant warmth seemed to follow her touch. Then she said joyously, “Look down there.”

“Where?” he asked.

“There—don't ye see it?”

“See what?”

“You and me!”

He looked where she pointed. The pool had settled, resumed its mirror-like calm, and reflected distinctly, not only their two bending faces, but their two figures kneeling side by side. Two tall redwoods rose on either side of them, like the columns before an altar.

There was a moment of silence. The drone of a bumble-bee near by seemed to make the silence swim drowsily in their ears; far off they heard the faint beat of a woodpecker. The suggestion of their kneeling figures in this magic mirror was vague, unreasoning, yet for the moment none the less irresistible. His arm instinctively crept around her little waist as he whispered,—he scarce knew what he said,—“Perhaps here is the treasure I am seeking.”

The girl laughed, released herself, and sprang up; the pan sank ingloriously to the bottom of the pool, where Fleming had to grope for it, assisted by Tinka, who rolled up her sleeve to her elbow. For a minute or two they washed gravely, but with no better success than attended his own individual efforts. The result in the bottom of the pan was the same. Fleming laughed.

“You see,” he said gayly, “the Mammon of unrighteousness is not for me—at least, so near your father's tabernacle.”

“That makes no difference now,” said the girl quickly, “for dad is goin' to move, anyway, farther up the mountains. He says it's gettin' too crowded for him here—when the last settler took up a section three miles off.”

“And are YOU going too?” asked the young man earnestly.

Tinka nodded her brown head. Fleming heaved a genuine sigh. “Well, I'll try my hand here a little longer. I'll put up a notice of claim; I don't suppose your father would object. You know he couldn't LEGALLY.”

“I reckon ye might do it ef ye wanted—ef ye was THAT keen on gettin' gold!” said Tinka, looking away. There was something in the girl's tone which this budding lover resented. He had become sensitive.

“Oh, well,” he said, “I see that it might make unpleasantness with your father. I only thought,” he went on, with tenderer tentativeness, “that it would be pleasant to work here near you.”

“Ye'd be only wastin' yer time,” she said darkly.

Fleming rose gravely. “Perhaps you're right,” he answered sadly and a little bitterly, “and I'll go at once.”

He walked to the spring, and gathered up his tools. “Thank you again for your kindness, and good-by.”

He held out his hand, which she took passively, and he moved away.

But he had not gone far before she called him. He turned to find her still standing where he had left her, her little hands clinched at her side, and her widely opened eyes staring at him. Suddenly she ran at him, and, catching the lapels of his coat in both hands, held him rigidly fast.

“No! no! ye sha'n't go—ye mustn't go!” she said, with hysterical intensity. “I want to tell ye something! Listen!—you—you—Mr. Fleming! I've been a wicked, wicked girl! I've told lies to dad—to mammy—to YOU! I've borne false witness—I'm worse than Sapphira—I've acted a big lie. Oh, Mr. Fleming, I've made you come back here for nothing! Ye didn't find no gold the other day. There wasn't any. It was all me! I—I—SALTED THAT PAN!”

“Salted it!” echoed Fleming, in amazement.

“Yes, 'salted it,'” she faltered; “that's what dad says they call it—what those wicked sons of Mammon do to their claims to sell them. I—put gold in the pan myself; it wasn't there before.”

“But why?” gasped Fleming.

She stopped. Then suddenly the fountains in the deep of her blue eyes were broken up; she burst into a sob, and buried her head in her hands, and her hands on his shoulder. “Because—because”—she sobbed against him—“I WANTED YOU to come back!”

He folded her in his arms. He kissed her lovingly, forgivingly, gratefully, tearfully, smilingly—and paused; then he kissed her sympathetically, understandingly, apologetically, explanatorily, in lieu of other conversation. Then, becoming coherent, he asked,—

“But WHERE did you get the gold?”

“Oh,” she said between fitful and despairing sobs, “somewhere!—I don't know—out of the old Run—long ago—when I was little! I didn't never dare say anything to dad—he'd have been crazy mad at his own daughter diggin'—and I never cared nor thought a single bit about it until I saw you.”

“And you have never been there since?”

“Never.”

“Nor anybody else?”

“No.”

Suddenly she threw back her head; her chip hat fell back from her face, rosy with a dawning inspiration! “Oh, say, Jack!—you don't think that—after all this time—there might”—She did not finish the sentence, but, grasping his hand, cried, “Come!”

She caught up the pan, he seized the shovel and pick, and they raced like boy and girl down the hill. When within a few hundred feet of the house she turned at right angles into the clearing, and saying, “Don't be skeered; dad's away,” ran boldly on, still holding his hand, along the little valley. At its farther extremity they came to the “Run,” a half-dried watercourse whose rocky sides were marked by the erosion of winter torrents. It was apparently as wild and secluded as the forest spring. “Nobody ever came here,” said the girl hurriedly, “after dad sunk the well at the house.”

One or two pools still remained in the Run from the last season's flow, water enough to wash out several pans of dirt.

Selecting a spot where the white quartz was visible, Fleming attacked the bank with the pick. After one or two blows it began to yield and crumble away at his feet. He washed out a panful perfunctorily, more intent on the girl than his work; she, eager, alert, and breathless, had changed places with him, and become the anxious prospector! But the result was the same. He threw away the pan with a laugh, to take her little hand! But she whispered, “Try again.”

He attacked the bank once more with such energy that a great part of it caved and fell, filling the pan and even burying the shovel in the debris. He unearthed the latter while Tinka was struggling to get out the pan.

“The mean thing is stuck and won't move,” she said pettishly. “I think it's broken now, too, just like ours.”

Fleming came laughingly forward, and, putting one arm around the girl's waist, attempted to assist her with the other. The pan was immovable, and, indeed, seemed to be broken and bent. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation and began hurriedly to brush away the dirt and throw the soil out of the pan.

In another moment he had revealed a fragment of decomposed quartz, like discolored honeycombed cheese, half filling the pan. But on its side, where the pick had struck it glancingly, there was a yellow streak like a ray of sunshine! And as he strove to lift it he felt in that unmistakable omnipotency of weight that it was seamed and celled with gold.

The news of Mr. Fleming's engagement, two weeks later, to the daughter of the recluse religious hunter who had made a big strike at Lone Run, excited some skeptical discussion, even among the honest congratulations of his partners.

“That's a mighty queer story how Jack got that girl sweet on him just by borrowin' a prospectin' pan of her,” said Faulkner, between the whiffs of his pipe under the trees. “You and me might have borrowed a hundred prospectin' pans and never got even a drink thrown in. Then to think of that old preachin' coon-hunter hevin' to give in and pass his strike over to his daughter's feller, jest because he had scruples about gold diggin' himself. He'd hev booted you and me outer his ranch first.”

“Lord, ye ain't takin' no stock in that hogwash,” responded the other. “Why, everybody knows old man Jallinger pretended to be sick o' miners and minin' camps, and couldn't bear to hev 'em near him, only jest because he himself was all the while secretly prospectin' the whole lode and didn't want no interlopers. It was only when Fleming nippled in by gettin' hold o' the girl that Jallinger knew the secret was out, and that's the way he bought him off. Why, Jack wasn't no miner—never was—ye could see that. HE never struck anything. The only treasure he found in the woods was Tinka Jallinger!”