Nevertheless, they still maintained the utmost caution. Sometimes,
idleness being no phenomenon, they would lie half the day in the shade
on the river-bank. The Tennessee was shrunken now in the heated season,
and great gravelly slopes were exposed. The two loiterers were
apparently motionless at first, but as their confidence increased and
the chances of being observed lessened, L'Épine, always dreading
discovery, began to casually pass the gravel and sand through his
fingers as he lay; sometimes he idly trifled with the blade of a hoe in
a shallow pool left by the receding waters, while the jolly Irishman,
now grave and solicitous, watched him breathlessly. Then L'Épine would
shake his head, and the mercurial O'Kimmon groaned his deep despondency.

Once the Frenchman's head was not shaken. A flush sprang up among the
pragmatic lines of L'Épine's face; his dark eyes glittered; his hand
shook; for as he held out the hoe, on its blade were vaguely glimmering
particles among the sand.

Later the two adventurers cherished a small nugget of red, red gold!

This find chanced below a bluff in a sort of grotto of rock, which the
water filled when the river was high, and left quite dry and exposed as
it receded in the droughts of summer.

Whether the two strangers were too much and too long out of sight;
whether attention was attracted by certain perforated dippers or pans
which they now brought into assiduous use, but which they sought to
conceal; whether they had been all the time furtively watched, with a
suspicion never abated, one can hardly say. They had observed every
precaution of secrecy that the most zealous heed could suggest. Only one