CHAPTER III
The Wisdom of Wat Lyman
IN COLDER blood, looking at the samples of ore and placer colours, without the glamour imparted to them by the dramatic story of the dying man, without the magnetism inspired by his implicit belief in what he was telling. Stone, returning to the cabin with Healy and Larkin after the burial of their comrade, was inclined to discount their chances of ever becoming millionaires. Yet the details imparted to him were explicit enough, holding far more promise than what he imagined Lyman had told Healy, which appeared to be nothing more than the general location of the placer and the glittering wall of quartz. The simile of the old prospector was ever vivid in Stone's imagination, the cliff of milky-white rock stretching away up until it merged with the blackness, the gold shining like stars in the Milky Way until that, too, faded gradually in the murk. It was hard to forget a picture like that, but Stone had heard many miners' tales and seen many gleaming specimens. He realized how such things were coloured and enlarged by the hope of the seeker, ever vivid until the prospector dies. He had heard stories of Lost Golcondas galore, of mountains of gold, of gold pulled up at grass roots, and there was
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