That woke them up! Deacon Chick came down from the stand with a
neat little box, and walked around among the people, showing off
the gold. There were six nice, fat little nuggets--smooth, and
yellow,--and delightful to handle. Each was about as big as a
postage-stamp, and about half an inch thick. This was the gold
which the Professor and Mr. Snider had extracted from the water,
right there at Rogers's Island, by their secret, chemical process.
It had been in tiny particles then, like dust, but they had sent
it somewhere, and had it made into these nuggets,--plump and
pleasing! They had a letter from someone in the Treasury to prove
that it was solid and pure, and of the very best quality. No one
needed the letter. The nuggets spoke for themselves,--they were so
heavy! I held two of them, one in each hand, and weighed them. We
all held one or two of them, and felt of them, and got a great
deal of pleasure out of them.

The people from Lanesport gathered around Deacon Chick, the men
looked at the gold nuggets, weighed them, and smiled at each
other.

"Looks like the real stuff,--hey?"

"Looks like it to ME, all right!"

Everybody was interested, brightened up, happy and good-natured.
They smiled and joked over the gold. Only one man seemed at all
troubled in his mind.

"There's jus' one thing," I heard him say to two other men,
"there's jus' one thing that kinder worries me. If we go ahead and