Posted by John Wilson on October 12, 2012 at 04:27:46 user hugo.
In Reply to: Re: why bother with the ingot? posted by Adam Quinan on October 12, 2012 at 03:49:18:
Of course Nancy knows that it would be enough to “find just a scrap of gold” (Chapter 2) or find “something worth blasting for” (Chapter 21). While they had initially planned to get Slater Bob to make the dust into an ingot, he was after all a slate miner not a gold miner. And even gold prospectors would not have made any gold they found into an ingot. But stopping at the getting of the “gold dust” would have cut out much of the story, including the disappearance of the gold from the crucible and Dick’s dash back to Beckfoot.