The silver was therefore somewhere up the Valley, and as it was winter when Jimmy found it, it would lie low down where the snow was cut off by the pines.

Alton lay still a minute with a curious glint in his eyes when the firelight touched them which was a tribute to the dead man, and then filled his pipe again.
His journey had been marked by petty misfortunes, each of which might become a more serious one, hitherto, and he was now alone.

This might be due to coincidence, but Alton, admitting that hypothesis, proceeded to consider an alternative one which resolved itself into two.

It was generally known in Somasco that he and Jimmy had held the clue to a secret that might be valuable, and strange prospectors for timber rights and minerals occasionally strayed into the valley.

Alton knew that most of the bushmen and free prospectors had a standard of honour which was somewhat higher than that usually lived up to in the cities.
They were quiet, fearless, free-handed men, the antitype of the roystering desperadoes he had now and then seen them depicted as by those who did not know them.