'       ·n  P' - ·: _      BOOK FOR GOLD-SEEKERS. -       -81
.-  and sealing it up in glass bottles, so that if they were tampered with he would know of it by the breaking of the seals. He hired an old, white-haired man, decrepit and feeble and blind in one eye, to hold the box while he chipped off the ore with the pick. No one else was allowed in the mine. The bottles holding the ore were 'carefully shipped under his supervision to San Francisco, where they were tested, and when his report was sent to London and compared with the other it was, found that it confirmed the finding of the first expert. Upon this the money was sent, with instructions to pay the $8oo,ooo, on the final condition that a well known American mineralogist confirmed the findings of the two English experts.
The American took 300 samples, and of these 157 showed no gold, seventy odd less than $2 a ton, and the remainder from $2 to $4 a ton. The findings of the English experts showed an average of $18 to $25 a ton. ; Upon this payment of the $8o00,0o  was at once stopped, and the representative of the syndicate decided to make a mill test of sixty days, placing one of their number in charge.
The new manager had every ounce of ore locked up in a room and each lot he had assayed, in addition to putting it through the mill. The assay confirmed the American's report, but the mill returns showed enough 'gold to warrant the English experts' reports. He knew that it was an impossibility for the mill to produce more gold than the ore contained, but to explain the impossibility was a problem.
After two weeks of wrestling with the enigma, -the manager was sitting one evening a few yards from the mill, when he happened to look at the roof and saw an opening which aroused his suspicion. He and a couple
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