"Glad to hear it," said Chaytor. "These two buckets are worth something. There's not less than twenty ounces."
There was more; the stuff they had washed yielded twenty-three ounces, and the whole day's yield was worth four hundred pounds.
"Nothing to complain of now, Chaytor," observed Basil in the evening.
"Nothing." Basil was busy with paper and pencil. "What are you up to there? Figuring?"
"Yes," replied Basil. "I am reckoning how much four hundred pounds a day would bring us in at the end of the year. Here it is. Three hundred and twelve working days in the year, leaving Sundays free."
"Why should we do that?" asked Chaytor. "There's no one to see us. It would be a sheer waste of so much money."
Basil looked up in surprise; the remark was not agreeable to him, the tone in which it was spoken was still less so.
"I am old-fashioned perhaps," he said. "I do not choose to work on the Sabbath day."
"No; I have always held the same notion."
"We'll not argue. What is your reckoning?"
"Three hundred and twelve working days a year," continued Basil. "Twelve days for sickness, leaving three hundred. At four hundreds pound a day we get a total of a hundred and twenty thousand--in pounds. Sixty thousand pounds each. Truly, a great fortune."
"Of course, if it lasts. There's the chance of its getting better. How does it look to you--as if it will hold out?"
Chaytor had been down the claim for some hours during the day, and had pocketed between forty and fifty ounces, which he chose to regard as his own special treasure trove.
"There's no saying," he said. "The vein runs sideways into the rock. It may peg out at any moment."
"We shall not have done badly by the time it does. I have to thank you for bringing me here."
"Yes," said Chaytor, ungraciously; "it was my discovery. Don't forget that."
"I shall never forget it, Chaytor, nor any of the other good turns you have done me. I don't know whether it is a healthy or an unhealthy sign that this better luck should have aroused me from the apathy in which I have been so long plunged. It has softened me; the crust of indifference, of disbelief in human goodness, is melting away, I am glad to say. That this is due to the prospect of becoming rich is not very creditable; I would rather that the change in me had sprung from a less worldly cause; it would have made me better satisfied with myself. But we mortals are very much of the earth, earthy, and we take too readily the impressions of immediate circumstances and of our surroundings. They mould our characters, as it were, and change them for better or worse."