But Mrs. March could not help worrying. Never since they had lived in the Pa.s.s had Nelly and Rob gone away for any long walk without coming and bidding her good-by, and telling her where they were going. The truth was, that this time they had entirely forgotten it: they were so excited by the hopes of finding a mine. They had walked nearly a mile when Nelly suddenly exclaimed: "Oh, Rob! we didn't say good-by to mamma! She won't know where we are."

"So we didn't!" said Rob. "What a shame! But we can't go back now, Nell: it's too late; we've come miles and miles; we'd better keep on; she'll know we're all right; we always are. We're most there now."

It was the middle of the afternoon before Rob and Nelly got home.

Mrs. March had been walking up and down the road anxiously for an hour, when she saw the two little figures coming down the very steepest of the hills. They walked very slowly; so slowly that she felt sure one of them must be hurt. The dogs were bounding along before them. As soon as the children saw their mother, Rob took off his hat, and Nelly her sun-bonnet, and waved them in the air. This relieved Mrs. March's fears, and the tears came into her eyes, she was so glad. "Oh, Robert, there they are!" she exclaimed to Mr.

March, who had just joined her. "See! there they are, way up on that steep hill. Thank G.o.d, they are safe!"

Mr. and Mrs. March both stood in the road, shading their eyes with their hands, and looking up at the children.

As they drew nearer, Mrs. March exclaimed: "Why, what are they carrying?" Mr. March burst out laughing, and said: "They look like little pack mules." In a few minutes, the hot, tired, dusty little wanderers reached the road, and ran breathlessly up to their father and mother:

"Oh, mamma!" cried Rob; and "Oh, papa!" cried Nelly. "We've found a mine; we've got lots of ore; now we can get all the money we want.

You see if this isn't almost exactly like the stuff in the man's wagon!" and Nelly emptied her ap.r.o.n on the ground, and Rob emptied his jacket; he had taken it off and carried it by the sleeves so as to make a big sack of it. Mr. and Mrs. March could hardly keep from laughing at the sight: there were the two piles of little bits of stone, and the children with red and dirty faces and the perspiration rolling down their cheeks, getting down on their knees to pick out the choicest specimens. Nelly was fumbling deep down in her pocket; presently she drew out her handkerchief all knotted in a wisp, and out of the last knot she took the little bit of ore which they had borrowed from the wagon for a sample. This she laid in her father's hand: "There, papa," she said, "that's the man's: we borrowed it to carry along to tell by."

"They don't look so much like it as they did," she added, turning sorrowfully back to the poor little pile of stones. Rob was gazing at them too, with a crest-fallen face.

"Why, they don't shine a bit now," he said; "up there they shone like every thing."

Mr. March picked up a bit of the stone and looked closely at it.

"Ah, Rob," he said, "the reason it doesn't shine now, is because the sun has gone under a cloud. There are little points of mica in these stones, and mica shines in the sun; but there isn't any silver here, dear. Did you really think you had made all our fortunes?"

Rob did not speak. He had hard work to keep from crying. He stood still, slowly kicking the pile of stones with one foot. His father pitied him very much.

"Never mind, Rob," he said; "you're not the first fellow that has thought he had found a mine, and been mistaken."

Rob stooped down and picked up two big handfuls of the stones and threw them as far as he could throw them.

"Old cheats!" he said.

"Yes, real old cheats!" said Nelly; and she began to scatter the stones with her foot. "And they were awful heavy. Oh, mamma, I'm so hungry!"

"So'm I," said Rob. "Isn't it dinner-time?"

"Dinner-time!" exclaimed their mother. "Did you really not have any more idea of the time than that! Why, it is three o'clock! Where have you been?"

"Not very far, mamma," answered Nelly; "only up where old Molly tumbled in. Rob thought perhaps that hole was a mine. It's all full of these shining stones. Isn't it too bad, mamma?"

"Isn't what too bad, Nell?" said Mrs. March.

"Why, too bad that they ain't silver," replied Nelly. "We thought we could all have every thing we wanted."

Mrs. March laughed.

"What do you want most of all this minute?" she said.

"Something to eat, mamma," said Nelly.

"Well, that you can have; and that I hope we can always have without any silver mine: and to-day we have something very good to eat."

"Oh! what, mamma, what? say, quick!" said Rob.

"Chicken pie," said Mrs. March, in a very comical, earnest tone.

"Chicken pie!" shouted Rob. "Hurrah! hurrah!" and both he and Nelly ran toward the house as hard as they could go.

"There is a wish-bone drying for you on the mantelpiece," called out Mr. March.

"They'll both wish for a silver mine, I expect," laughed Mrs. March, as she and her husband walked slowly along. "What a queer notion that was to come into such children's heads!"

"I don't know," said Mr. March, reflectively; "I think it's a very natural notion to come into anybody's head. I'd like a silver mine myself, very much."

"We mightn't be any happier if we had one, nor half so happy,"

replied Mrs. March. "I'd rather have you well, and the children well, than have all the silver mines in Colorado."

"If you had to choose between the two things, I dare say," answered Mr. March; "but I suppose a person might have good health and a silver mine besides. How would that do?"

"Well, I'll make sure of the health first," said Mrs. March, laughing. "I'm not in so much hurry for the silver mine."

After Rob and Nelly had eaten up all the chicken pie which had been saved for them, they took down the wish-bone from the mantelpiece, and prepared to "wish."

"It's so dry, it'll break splendidly," said Rob. "I know what I'm going to wish for."

"So do I," said Nelly, resolutely; "I'm going to wish hard."

They both pulled with all their might. Crack went the wish-bone,--no difference in the length of the two pieces.

"Pshaw!" cried Rob; "how mean! one or the other of us might have had it."

Nelly drew a long sigh. "Rob," said she, "What did you wish for?"

"A silver mine," said he, "both times."

"So did I," said Nell. "I thought you did, too. I guess we sha'n't either of us ever have one."

"I don't care," said Rob; "there's plenty of money besides in mines.

I'm going to have a bank when I'm a man."

"Are you, Rob?" said Nell. "What's that?"

"Oh, just a house where you can go and get money," replied Rob, confidently. "I used to go with papa often at home. They gave him all he wanted."

Nelly looked somewhat perplexed. She did not know any thing about banks: still she thought there was a loose screw somewhere in Rob's calculations; but she did not ask him any more questions.

After tea, Mr. March walked away with the driver of the mule team.

They did not come back until it was dark. Mr. March opened the door of the sitting-room, and said, "Sarah, I wish you'd come out here a few minutes." When she had stepped out and closed the door, he said, "I want you to come up where the wagon is: there's a nice bonfire up there, and it isn't cold; I want this man to tell you all he's been telling me about a place down south,--a hundred miles below this. If it's all's he says, that's the place we ought to go to. But I wanted you to hear all about it before I said any thing to the Deacon."

The driver's name, by the way, was Billy; he was called "Long Billy"

on the roads where he drove, because his legs were so long, and his body so short. He had made a splendid bonfire on the edge of the brook, and Mr. March and he had been sitting there for an hour, on a buffalo robe spread on the ground. Mrs. March sat down with them, and Long Billy began his story over again. It seemed that he had formerly been a driver of a mule team on another route, much farther south than this one. He had "hauled ore," as he called it, from a little town called Rosita, to another town called Canyon City. There the ore was packed on cars and sent over the little narrow-gauge railroad up to Central City, where the silver was extracted from the rock, and moulded into little solid bricks of silver ready to be sent to the mint at Philadelphia to be made into half dollars and quarters.