We gasped with amazement.

"The rest was easy. I went up the shaft groaning and cursing. I pretended to faint. I told them the roof of the drift had fallen in on me. It was rotten stuff, anyway, and they knew it. They didn't mind me risking my life. I cursed them, said I would sue the Company, and went off looking too sore for words. The Manager was disgusted, he went down and took a look at things; declared he would throw up the work at that place; the ground was no good. He made that report to the Company."

The Halfbreed looked round triumphantly.

"Now, here's the point. We can get a lay on that ground. One of you boys must apply for it. They mustn't know I'm in with you, or they would suspect right away. They're none too scrupulous themselves in their dealings."

He paused impressively.

"You cinch that lay agreement. Get it signed right away. We'll go in and work like Old Nick. We'll make a big clean-up by Spring. I'll take you right to the gold. There's thousands and thousands lying snug in the ground just waiting for us. It's right in our mit. Oh, it's a cinch, a cinch!"

The Halfbreed almost grew excited. Bending forward, he eyed us keenly. In a breathless silence we stared at each other.

"Well," I objected, "seems to be putting up rather a job on the Company."

Jim was silent, but the Prodigal cut in sharply:

"Job nothing—it's a square proposition. We don't know for certain that gold's there. Maybe it's only a piffling pocket, and we'll get souped for our pains. No, it seems to me it's a fair gambling proposition. We're taking all kinds of chances. It means awful hard work; it means privation and, maybe, bitter disappointment. It's a gamble, I tell you, and are we going to be such poor sports as turn it down? I for one am strongly in favour of it. What do you say? A big sporting chance—are you there, boys, are you there?"

He almost shouted in his excitement.

"Hush! Some one might hear you," warned the Halfbreed.

"Yes, that's right. Well, it looks mighty good to me, and if you boys are willing we'll just draw up papers and sign an agreement right away. Is it a go?"

We nodded, so he got ink and paper and drew up a form of partnership.

"Now," said he, his eyes dancing, "now, to secure that lay before any one else cuts in on us. Gee! but it's getting dark and cold outdoors these days. Snow falling; well, I must mush to Dawson to-night."

He hurried on some warm, yet light, clothing, all the time talking excitedly of the chance that fortune had thrown in our way, and gleeful as a schoolboy.

"Now, boys," he says, "hope I'll have good luck. Jim, put in a prayer for me. Well, see you all to-morrow. Good-bye."

* * * * *

It was late next night when he returned. We were sitting in the cabin, anxious and expectant, when he threw open the door. He was tired, wet, dirty, but irrepressibly jubilant.

"Hurrah, boys!" he cried. "I've cinched it. I saw Mister Manager of the big Company. He was very busy, very important, very patronising. I was the poor miner seeking a lay. I played the part well. He began by telling me he didn't want to give any lays at present; just wanted to stand me off, you know; make me more keen. I spoke about some of their ground on Hunker. He didn't seem enthusiastic. Then, at last, as if in despair, I mentioned this bit on Bonanza. I could see he was itching to let me have it, but he was too foxy to show it. He actually told me it was an extra rich piece of ground, when all the time he knew his own mining engineer had condemned it."

The Prodigal's eyes danced delightedly.

"Well, we sparred round a bit like two fake fighters. My! but he was wily, that old Jew. Finally he agreed to let me have it on a fifty-per-cent. basis. Don't faint, boys. Fifty per cent., I said. I'm sorry. It was the best I could do, and you know I'm not slow. That means they get half of all we take out. Oh, the old shark! the robber! I tried to beat him down, but he stood pat; wouldn't budge. So I gave in, and we signed the lay agreement, and now everything's in shape. Gee whiz! didn't I give a sigh of relief when I got outside! He thinks I'm the fall guy, and went off chuckling."

He raised his voice triumphantly.

"And now, boys, we've got the ground cinched, so get action on yourselves. Here's where we make our first real stab at fortune. Here's where we even up on the hard jabs she's handed us in the past; here's where we score a bull's-eye, or I miss my guess. The gold's there, boys, you can bank on that; and the harder we work the more we're going to get of it. Now, we're going to work hard. We're going to make ordinary hard work look like a Summer vacation. We're going to work for all we're worth—and then some. Are you there, boys, are you there?"

"We are," we shouted with one accord.



CHAPTER XVII

There was no time to lose. Every hour for us meant so much more of that precious pay-dirt that lay under the frozen surface. The Winter leapt on us with a swoop, a harsh, unconciliating Winter, that made out-door work an unmitigated hardship. But there was the hope of fortune nerving and bracing us, till we lost in it all thought of self. Nothing short of desperate sickness, death even, would drive us from our posts. It was with this dauntless spirit we entered on the task before us.

And, indeed, it was one that called for all in a man of energy and self-sacrifice. There was wood to get for the thawing of the ground; there was a cabin to be built on the claim; and, lastly, there was a vast dump to be taken out of the ground for the spring sluicing. We planned things so that no man would be idle for a moment, and so that every ounce of strength expended would show its result.

The Halfbreed took charge, and we, recognising it as his show, obeyed him implicitly. He decided to put down two holes to bed-rock, and, after much deliberation, selected the places. This was a matter for the greatest judgment and experience, and we were satisfied that he had both.

We ran up a little cabin and banked it nearly to the low eaves with snow. By-and-bye more fell on the roof to the depth of three feet, so that the place seemed like a huge white hummock. Only in front could you recognise it as a cabin by the low doorway, where we had always to stoop on entering. Within were our bunks, a tiny stove, a few boxes to sit on, a few dishes, our grub; that was all. Often we regretted our big cabin on the hill, with its calico-lined "den" and its separate kitchen. But in this little box of a home we were to put in many weary months.

Not that the time seemed long to us; we were too busy for that. Indeed, often we wished it were twice as long. Snow had fallen in September, and by December we were in an Arctic world of uncompromising harshness. Day after day the glass stood between forty and fifty below zero. It was hatefully, dangerously cold. It seemed as if the frost-fiend had a cruel grudge against us. It made us grim—and careful. We didn't talk much in those days. We just worked, worked, worked, and when we did talk it was of our work, our ceaseless work.

Would we strike it rich? It was all a gamble, the most exciting gamble in the world. It thrilled our day hours with excitement; it haunted our sleep; it lent strength to the pick-stroke and vigour to the windlass-crank. It made us forget the bitter cold, till some one would exclaim, and gently knead the fresh snow on our faces. The cold burned our cheeks a fierce brick-red, and a frostbite showed on them like a patch of white putty. The old scars, never healing, were like blotches of lamp-black.

But neither cold nor fatigue could keep us away from the shaft and the drift. We had gone down to bed-rock, and were tunnelling in to meet the hole the Halfbreed had covered up. So far we had found nothing. Every day we panned samples of the dirt, always getting colours, sometimes a fifty-cent pan, but never what we dreamed of, hoped for.

"Wait, boys, till we get a two-hundred-dollar pan, then we'll begin to whoop it up some."

Once the Company Manager came down on a dog-team. He looked over our shaft. He wore a coon coat, with a cap of beaver, and huge fur mits hung by a cord around his neck. He was massive and impassive. Spiky icicles bristled around his mouth.

"What luck, boys?" His breath came like steam.

"None, so far," we told him, wearily, and off he went into the frozen gloom, saying he hoped we would strike it before long.

"Wait a while."

We were working two men to a shaft, burning our ground over night. The Prodigal and I manned the windlasses, while the old miners went down the drifts. It was a cold, cold job standing there on that rugged platform turning the windlass-crank. Long before it was fairly light we got to our posts, and lowered our men into the hole. The air was warmer down there; but the work was harder, more difficult, more dangerous.

At noon there was no sunshine, only a wan, ashen light that suffused the sky. A deathlike stillness lay on the valley, not a quiver or movement in leaf or blade. The snow was a shroud, smooth save where the funereal pines pricked through. In that intensity of cold, that shivering agony of desolation, it seemed as if nature was laughing at us—the Cosmic Laugh.

Our meals were hurriedly cooked and bolted. We grudged every moment of our respite from toil. At night we often were far too weary to undress. We lost our regard for cleanliness; we neglected ourselves. Always we talked of the result of the day's panning and the chances of to-morrow. Surely we would strike it soon.

"Wait awhile."

Colder it grew and colder. Our kerosene flowed like mush. The water froze solid in our kettle. Our bread was full of icy particles. Everything had to be thawed out continually. It was tiresome, exasperating, when we were in such a devil of a hurry. It kept us back; it angered us, this pest of a cold. Our tempers began to suffer. We were short, taciturn. The strain was beginning to tell on us.

"Wait awhile."

Then, one afternoon, the Something happened. It was Jim who was the chosen one. About three o'clock he signalled to be hoisted up, and when he appeared he was carrying a pan of dirt. "Call the others," he said.

All together in the little cabin we stood round, while Jim washed out the pan in snow-water melt over our stove. I will never forget how eagerly we watched the gravel, and the whirling, dexterous movements of the old man. We could see gleams of yellow in the muddy water. Thrills of joy and hope went through us. We had got the thing, the big thing, at last.

"Hurry, Jim," I said, "or I'll die of suspense."

Patiently he went on. There it was at last in the bottom of the pan—sweeter to our eyes than to a woman the sight of her first-born. There it lay, glittering, gleaming gold, fine gold, coarse gold, nuggety gold.

"Now, boys, you can whoop it up," said Jim quietly; "for there's many and many a pan like it down there in the drift."

But never a whoop. What was the matter with us? When the fortune we had longed for so eagerly came at last, we did not greet it even with a cheer. Oh, we were painfully silent.

Solemnly we shook hands all round.



CHAPTER XVIII

"Now to weigh it," said the Prodigal.

On the tiny pair of scales we turned it out—ninety-five dollars' worth.

Well, it was a good start, and we were all possessed with a frantic eagerness to go down in the drift. I crawled along the tunnel. There, in the face of it, I could see the gold shining, and the longer I looked the more I seemed to see. It was rich, rich. I picked out and burnished a nugget as large as a filbert. There were lots of others like it. It was a strike. The question was: how much was there of it? The Halfbreed soon settled our doubts on that score.

"It stands to reason the pay runs between where I first found it and where we've struck it now. That alone means a tidy stake for each of us. Say, boys, if you were to cover all that distance with twenty-dollar gold pieces six feet wide, and packed edge to edge, I wouldn't take them for our interest in that bit of ground. I see a fine big ranch in Manitoba for my share; ay, and hired help to run it. The only thing that sticks in my gullet is that fifty per cent. to the Company."

"Well, we can't kick," I said; "we'd never have got the lay if they'd had a hunch. My! won't they be sore?"

Sure enough, in a few days the news leaked out, and the Manager came post-haste.

"Hear you've struck it rich, boys."

"So rich that I guess we'll have to pack down gravel from the benches to mix in before we can sluice it," said the Prodigal.

"You don't say. Well, I'll have to have a man on the ground to look after our interests."

"All right. It means a good thing for you."

"Yes, but it would have meant a better if we had worked it ourselves. However, you boys deserve your luck. Hello, the devil——"

He turned round and saw the Halfbreed. He gave a long whistle and went away, looking pensive.

* * * * *

It was the night of the discovery when the Prodigal made us an address.

"Look here, boys; do you know what this means? It means victory; it means freedom, happiness, the things we want, the life we love. To me it means travel, New York, Paris, evening dress, the opera. To McCrimmon here it means his farm. To each according to his notion, it means the 'Things That Matter.'

"Now, we've just begun. The hardest part is to come, is to get out the fortune that's right under our feet. We're going to get every cent of it, boys. There's a little over three months to do it in, leaving about a month to make sluice-boxes and clean up the dirt. We've got to work like men at a burning barn. We've worked hard, but we've got to go some yet. For my part, I'm willing to do stunts that will make my previous record look like a plugged dime. I guess you boys all feel the same way."

"You bet we do."

"Well, nuf sed; let's get busy."

So, once more, with redoubled energy, we resumed our tense, unremitting round of toil. Now, however, it was vastly different. Every bucket of dirt meant money in our pockets, every stroke of the pick a dollar. Not that it was all like the first rich pocket we had struck. It proved a most erratic and puzzling paystreak—one day rich beyond our dreams, another too poor to pay for the panning. We swung on a pendulum of hope and despair. Perhaps this made it all the more exciting, and stimulated us unnaturally, and always we cursed that primitive method of mining that made every bucket of dirt the net result of infinite labor.

Every day our two dumps increased in size (for we had struck pay on the other shaft), and every day our assurance and elation increased correspondingly. It was bruited around that we had one of the richest bits of ground in the country, and many came to gaze at us. It used to lighten my labours at the windlass to see their looks of envy and to hear their awe-stricken remarks.

"That's one of them," they would say; "one of the lucky four, the lucky laymen."

So, as the facts, grossly exaggerated, got noised abroad, they came to call us the "Lucky Laymen."

Looking back, there will always seem to me something weird and incomprehensible in those twilight days, an unreality, a vagueness like some dreary, feverish dream. For three months I did not see my face in a mirror. Not that I wanted to, but I mention this just to show how little we thought of ourselves.

In like manner, never did I have a moment's time to regard my inner self in the mirror of consciousness. No mental analysis now; no long hours of retrospection, no tete-a-tete interviews with my soul. At times I felt as if I had lost my identity. I was a slave of the genie Gold, releasing it from its prison in the frozen bowels of the earth. I was an automaton turning a crank in the frozen stillness of the long, long night.

It was a life despotically objective, and now, as I look back, it seems as if I had never lived it at all. I seem to look down a long, dark funnel and see a little machine-man bearing my semblance, patiently, steadily, wearily turning the handle of a windlass in the clear, lancinating cold of those sombre, silent days.

I say "bearing my outward semblance," and yet I sometimes wonder if that rough-bearded figure in heavy woollen clothes looked the least like me. I wore heavy sweaters, mackinaw trousers, thick German socks and moccasins. From frequent freezing my cheeks were corroded. I was miserably thin, and my eyes had a wild, staring expression through the pupils dilating in the long darkness. Yes, mentally and physically I was no more like myself than a convict enduring out his life in the soulless routine of a prison.

The days were lengthening marvellously. We noted the fact with dull joy. It meant more light, more time, more dirt in the dump. So it came about that, from ten hours of toil, we went to twelve, to fourteen; then, latterly, to sixteen, and the tension of it was wearing us down to skin and bone.

We were all feeling wretched, overstrained, ill-nourished, and it was only voicing the general sentiment when, one day, the Prodigal remarked:

"I guess I'll have to let up for a couple of days. My teeth are all on the bum. I'm going to town to see a dentist."

"Let me look at them," said the Halfbreed.

He looked. The gums were sullen, unwholesome-looking.

"Why, it's a touch of scurvy, lad; a little while, and you'd be spitting out your teeth like orange pips; your legs would turn black, and when you squeezed your fingers into the flesh the hole would stay. You'd get rotten, then you'd mortify and die. But it's the easiest thing in the world to cure. Nothing responds to treatment so readily."

He made a huge brew of green-spruce tea, of which we all partook, and in a few days the Prodigal was fit again.

It was mid-March when we finished working out our ground. We had done well, not so well, perhaps, as we had hoped for, but still magnificently well. Never had men worked harder, never fought more desperately for success. There were our two dumps, pyramids of gold-permeated dirt at whose value we could only guess. We had wrested our treasure from the icy grip of the eternal frost. Now it remained—and O, the sweetness of it—to glean the harvest of our toil.



CHAPTER XIX

"The water's beginning to run, boys," said the Halfbreed. "A few more days and we'll be able to start sluicing."

The news was like a flood of sunshine to us. For days we had been fixing up the boxes and getting everything in readiness. The sun beat strongly on the snow, which almost visibly seemed to retreat before it. The dazzlingly white surface was crisp and flaky, and around the tree boles curving hollows had formed. Here and there brown earth peered nakedly through. Every day the hillside runnels grew in strength.

We were working at the mouth of a creek down which ran a copious little stream all through the Springtime. We tapped it some distance above us, and ran part of it along our line of sluice-boxes. These boxes went between our two dumps, so that it was easy to shovel in from both sides. Nothing could have been more convenient.

At last, after a day of hot sunshine, we found quite a freshet of water coming down the boxes, leaping and dancing in the morning light. I remember how I threw in the first shovelful of dirt, and how good it was to see the bright stream discolour as our friend the water began his magic work. For three days we shovelled in, and on the fourth we made a clean-up.

"I guess it's time," said Jim, "or those riffles will be gettin' choked up."

And, sure enough, when we ran off the water there were some of them almost full of the yellow metal, wet and shiny, gloriously agleam in the morning light.

"There's ten thousand dollars if there's an ounce," said the Company's man, and the weigh-up proved he was right. So the gold was packed in two long buckskin pokes and sent into town to be deposited in the bank.

Day after day we went on shovelling in, and about twice a week we made a clean-up. The month of May was half over when we had only a third of our dirt run through the boxes. We were terribly afraid of the water failing us, and worked harder than ever. Indeed, it was difficult to tell when to leave off. The nights were never dark now; the daylight was over twenty hours in duration. The sun described an ellipse, rising a little east of north and setting a little west of north. We shovelled in till we were too exhausted to lift another ounce. Then we lay down in our clothes and slept as soon as we touched the pillow.

"There's eighty thousand to our credit in the bank, and only a third of our dump's gone. Hooray, boys!" said the Prodigal.

About one o'clock in the morning the birds began to sing, and the sunset glow had not faded from the sky ere the sunrise quickened it with life once more. Who that has lived in the North will ever forget the charm, the witchery of those midnight skies, where the fires of the sun are banked and never cold? Surely, long after all else is forgotten, will linger the memory of those mystic nights with all their haunting spell of weird, disconsolate solitude.

One afternoon I was working on the dump, intent on shovelling in as much dirt as possible before supper, when, on looking up, who should greet me but Locasto. Since our last interview in town I had not seen him, and, somehow, this sudden sight of him came as a kind of a shock. Yet the manner of the man as he approached me was hearty in the extreme. He held out his great hand to me, and, as I had no desire to antagonise him, I gave him my own.

He was riding. His big, handsome face was bronzed, his black eyes clear and sparkling, his white teeth gleamed like mammoth ivory. He certainly was a dashing, dominant figure of a man, and, in spite of myself, I admired him.

His manner in his salutation was cordial, even winning.

"I've just been visiting some of my creek properties," he said. "I heard you fellows had made a good strike, and I thought I'd come down and congratulate you. It is pretty good, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said; "not quite so good as we expected, but we'll all have a tidy sum."

"I'm glad. Well, I suppose you'll go outside this Fall."

"No, I think I'll stay in. You see, we've the Gold Hill property, which looks promising; and then we have two claims on Ophir."

"Oh, Ophir! I don't think you'll ever take a fortune out of Ophir. I bought a claim there the other day. The man pestered me, so I gave him five thousand for it, just to get rid of him. It's eight below."

"Why," I said, "that's the claim I staked and got beaten out of."

"You don't say so. Well, now, that's too bad. I bought it from a man named Spankiller; his brother's a clerk in the gold office. Tell you what I'll do. I'll let you have it for the five thousand I gave for it."

"No," I answered, "I don't think I want it now."

"All right; think it over, anyway. If you should change your mind, let me know. Well, I must go. I've got to get into town to-night. That's my mule-train back there on the trail. I've got pretty nearly ten thousand ounces over there."

I looked and saw the mules with the gold-packs slung over their backs. There were four men to guard them, and it seemed to me that in one of these men I recognised the little wizened figure of the Worm.

I shivered.

"Yes, I've done pretty well," he continued; "but it don't make any difference. I spend it as fast as I get it. A month ago I didn't have enough ready cash to pay my cigar bill, yet I could have gone to the bank and borrowed a hundred thousand. It was there in the dump. Oh, it's a rum business this mining. Well, good-bye."

He was turning to go when, suddenly, he stopped.

"Oh, by the way, I saw a friend of yours before I left. No need to mention names, you lucky dog. When's the big thing coming off? Well, I must congratulate you again. She looks sweeter than ever. Bye-bye."

He was off, leaving a very sinister impression on my mind. In his parting smile there was a trace of mockery that gravely disquieted me. I had thought much of Berna during the past few months, but as the gold fever took hold of me I put her more and more from my mind. I told myself that all this struggle was for her. In the thought that she was safe I calmed all anxious fear. Sometimes by not thinking so much of dear ones, one can be more thoughtful of them. So it was with me. I knew that all my concentration of effort was for her sake, and would bring her nearer to me. Yet at Locasto's words all my old longing and heartache vehemently resurged.

In spite of myself, I was the prey of a growing uneasiness. Things seemed vastly different, now success had come to me. I could not bear to think of her working in that ambiguous restaurant, rubbing shoulders with its unspeakable habitues. I wondered how I had ever deceived myself into thinking it was all right. I began to worry, so that I knew only a trip into Dawson would satisfy me. Accordingly, I hired a big Swede to take my place at the shovel, and set out once more on the hillside trail for town.



CHAPTER XX

I found the town more animated than ever, the streets more populous, the gaiety more unrestrained. Everywhere were flaunting signs of a plethoric wealth. The anxious Cheechako had vanished from the scene, and the victorious miner masqueraded in his place. He swaggered along in the glow of the Spring sunshine, a picture of perfect manhood, bronzed and lean and muscular. He was brimming over with the exuberance of health. He had come into town to "live" things, to transmute this yellow dust into happiness, to taste the wine of life, to know the lips of flame.

It was the day of the Man with the Poke. He was King. The sheer animalism of him overflowed in midnight roysterings, in bacchanalian revels, in debauches among the human debris of the tenderloin.

Every one was waiting for him, to fleece him, rob him, strip him. It was also the day of the man behind the bar, of the gambler, of the harpy.

My strange, formless fears for Berna were soon set at rest. She was awaiting me. She looked better than I had ever seen her, and she welcomed me with an eager delight that kindled me to rapture.

"Just think of it," she said, "only two weeks, and we'll be together for always. It seems too good to be true. Oh, my dear, how can I ever love you enough? How happy we are going to be, aren't we?"

"We're going to be happier than any two people ever were before," I assured her.

We crossed the Yukon to the green glades of North Dawson, and there, on a little rise, we sat down, side by side. How I wish I could put into words the joy that filled my heart! Never was lad so happy as I. I spoke but little, for love's silences are sweeter than all words. Well, well I mind me how she looked: just like a picture, her hands clasped on her lap, her eyes star-bright, angel-sweet, mother-tender. From time to time she would give me a glance so full of trust and love that my heart would leap to her, and wave on wave of passionate tenderness come sweeping over me.

It may be there was something humble in my stintless adoration; it may be I was like a child for the pleasure of her nearness; it may be my eyes told all too well of the fire that burned within me, but O, the girl was kind, gentler than forgiveness, sweeter than all heaven. Caressingly she touched my hair. I kissed her fingers, kissed them again and again; and then she lifted my hand to her lips, and I felt her kiss fall upon it. How wondrously I tingled at the touch. My hand seemed mine no longer—a consecrated thing. Proud, happy me!

"Yes," she went on, "doesn't it seem as if we were dreaming? You know, I always thought it was a dream, and now it's coming true. You'll take me away from this place, won't you, boy?—far, far away. I'll tell you now, dear, I've borne it all for your sake, but I don't think I could bear it any longer. I would rather die than sink in the mire, and yet you can't imagine how this life affects one. It's sad, sad, but I don't get shocked at things in the way I used to. You know, I sometimes think a girl, no matter how good, sweet, modest to begin with, placed in such surroundings could fall gradually."

I agreed with her. Too well I knew I was becoming calloused to the evils around me. Such was the insidious corruption of the gold-camp, I now regarded with indifference things that a year ago I would have shrunk from with disgust.

"Well, it will be all over very soon, won't it, dear? I don't know what I'd have done if it hadn't been for the rough miners. They've been so kind to me. When they saw I was straight and honest they couldn't be good enough. They shielded me in every way, and kept back the other kind of men. Even the women have been my friends and helped me."

She looked at me archly.

"And, you know, I've had ever so many offers of marriage, too, from honest, rough, kindly men—and I've refused them ever so gracefully."

"Has Locasto ever made any more overtures?"

Her face grew grave.

"Yes, about a month ago he besieged me, gave me no rest, made all kinds of proposals and promises. He wanted to divorce his 'outside' wife and marry me. He wanted to settle a hundred thousand dollars on me. He tried everything in his power to force me to his will. Then, when he saw it was no use, he turned round and begged me to let him be my friend. He spoke so nicely of you. He said he would help us in any way he could. He's everything that's kind to me now. He can't do enough for me. Yet, somehow, I don't trust him."

"Well, my precious," I assured her, "all danger, doubt, despair, will soon be over. Locasto and the rest of them will be as shadows, never to haunt my little girl again. The Great, Black North will fade away, will dissolve into the land of sunshine and flowers and song. You will forget it."

"The Great Black North.—I will never forget it, and I will always bless it. It has given me my love, the best love in all the world."

"O my darling, my Life, I'll take you away from it all soon, soon. We'll go to my home, to Garry, to Mother. They will love you as I love you."

"I'm sure I will love them. What you have told me of them makes them seem very real to me. Will you not be ashamed of me?"

"I will be proud, proud of you, my girl."

Ah, would I not! I looked at that flower-like face the sunshine glorified so, the pretty, bright hair falling away from her low brow in little waves, the lily throat, the delicately patrician features, the proud poise of her head. Who would not have been proud of her? She awoke all that was divine in me. I looked as one might look on a vision, scarce able to believe it real.

Suddenly she pointed excitedly.

"Look, dear, look at the rainbow. Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it beautiful?"

I gazed in rapt admiration. Across the river a shower had fallen, and the clouds, clearing away abruptly, had left there a twin rainbow of matchless perfection. Its double arch was poised as accurately over the town as if it had been painted there. Each hoop was flawless in form, lovely in hue, tenderly luminous, exquisite in purity. Never had I seen the double iris so immaculate in colouring, and, with its bases resting on the river, it curved over the gold-born city like a frame of ethereal beauty.

"Does it not seem, dear, like an answer to our prayer, an omen of good hope, a promise for the future?"

"Yes, beloved, our future, yours and mine. The clouds are rolling away. All is bright with sunshine once again, and God sends His rainbow to cheer and comfort us. It will not be long now. On the first day of June, beloved, I will come to you, and we will be made man and wife. You will be waiting for me, will you not?"

"Yes, yes, waiting ever so eagerly, my lover, counting every hour, every minute."

I kissed her passionately, and we held each other tightly for a moment. I saw come into her eyes that look which comes but once into the eyes of a maid, that look of ineffable self-surrender, of passionate abandonment. Life is niggard of such moments, yet can our lives be summed up in them.

She rested her head on my shoulder; her lips lay on mine, and they moved faintly.

"Yes, lover, yes, the first of June. Don't fail me, honey, don't fail me."

We parted, buoyant with hope, in an ecstasy of joy. She was for me, this beautiful, tender girl, for me. And the time was nigh when she should be mine, mine to adore until the end. Always would she be by my side; daily could I plot and plan to give her pleasure; every hour by word and look and act could I lavish on her the exhaustless measure of my love. Ah! life would be too short for me. Could aught in this petty purblind existence of ours redeem it and exalt it so: her love, this pure sweet girl's, and mine. Let nations grapple, let Mammon triumph, let pestilence o'erwhelm; what matter, we love, we love. O proud, happy me!

* * * * *

I got back to the claim. Everything was going merrily, but I felt little desire to resume my toil. I was strangely wearied, worn out somehow. Yet I took up my shovel again with a body that rebelled in every tissue. Never had I felt like this before. Something was wrong with me. I was weak. At night I sweated greatly. I cared not to eat.

* * * * *

"Well," said the Prodigal, "it's all over but the shouting. From my calculations we've cleaned up two hundred and six thousand dollars. That's a hundred and three between us four. It's cost us about three to get out the stuff; so there will be, roughly speaking, about twenty-five thousand for each of us."

How jubilant every one was looking—every one but me. Somehow I felt as if money didn't matter just then, for I was sick, sick.

"Why, what's the matter?" said the Prodigal, staring at me curiously. "You look like a ghost."

"I feel like one, too," I answered. "I'm afraid I'm in for a bad spell. I want to lie down awhile, boys ... I'm tired.... The first of June, I've got a date on the first of June. I must keep it, I must.... Don't let me sleep too long, boys. I mustn't fail. It's a matter of life and death. The first of June...."

Alas, on the first of June I lay in the hospital, raving and tossing in the clutches of typhoid fever.



CHAPTER XXI

I was lying in bed, and a heavy weight was pressing on me, so that, in spite of my struggles, I could not move. I was hot, insufferably hot. The blood ran boiling through my veins. My flesh was burning up. My brain would not work. It was all cobwebs, murky and stale as a charnel-house. Yet at times were strange illuminations, full of terror and despair. Blood-red lights and purple shadows alternated in my vision. Then came the dreams.

* * * * *

There was always Berna. Through a mass of grimacing, greed-contorted faces gradually there formed and lingered her sweet and pensive one. We were in a strange costume, she and I. It seemed like that of the early Georges. We were running away, fleeing from some one. For her sake a great fear and anxiety possessed me. We were eloping, I fancied.

There was a marsh to cross, a hideous quagmire, and our pursuers were close. We started over the quaking ground, then, suddenly, I saw her sink. I rushed to aid her, and I, too, sank. We were to our necks in the soft ooze, and there on the bank, watching us, was the foremost of our hunters. He laughed at our struggles; he mocked us; he rejoiced to see us drown. And in my dream the face of the man seemed strangely like Locasto.

* * * * *

We were in a bower of roses, she and I. It was still further back in history. We seemed to be in the garden of a palace. I was in doublet and hose, and she wore a long, flowing kirtle. The air was full of fragrance and sunshine. Birds were singing. A fountain scattered a shower of glittering diamonds on the breeze. She was sitting on the grass, while I reclined by her side, my head lying on her lap. Above me I could see her face like a lily bending over me. With dainty fingers she crumpled a rose and let the petals snow down on me.

Then, suddenly, I was seized, torn away from her by men in black, who roughly choked her screams. I was dragged off, thrown into a foul cell, left many days. Then, one night, I was dragged forth and brought before a grim tribunal in a hall of gloom and horror. They pronounced my doom—Death. The chief Inquisitor raised his mask, and in those gloating features I recognised—Locasto.

* * * * *

Again it seemed as if I were still further back in history, in some city under the Roman rule. I was returning from the Temple with my bride. How fair and fresh and beautiful she was, garlanded with flowers and radiantly happy. Again it was Berna.

Suddenly there are shouts, the beating of drums, the clash of cymbals. The great Governor of the Province is coming. He passes with his retinue. Suddenly he catches sight of her whom I have but newly wed. He stops. He asks who is the maid. They tell him. He looks at me with haughty contempt. He gives a sign. His servants seize her and drag her screaming away. I try to follow, to kill him. I, too, am seized, overpowered. They bind me, put out my eyes. The Roman sees them do it. He laughs as the red-hot iron kisses my eye-balls. He mocks me, telling me what a dainty feast awaits him in my bride. Again I see Locasto.

* * * * *

Then came another phase of my delirium, in which I struggled to get to her. She was waiting for me, wanting me, breaking her heart at my delay. O, Berna, my soul, my life, since the beginning of things we were fated. 'Tis no flesh love, but something deeper, something that has its source at the very core of being. It is not for your sweet face, your gentle spirit, my own, that you are dearer to me than all else: it is because—you are you. If all the world were to turn against you, flout you, stone you, then would I rush to your side, shield you, die with you. If you were attainted with leprosy, I would enter the lazar-house for your sake.

"O Berna, I must see you, I must, I must. Let me go to her ... now ... dear! She's calling me. She's in trouble. Oh, for the love of God, let me go ... let me go, I say.... Curse you, I will. She's in trouble. You can't hold me. I'm stronger than you all when she calls.... Let me ... let me.... Oh, oh, oh ... you're hurting me so. I'm weak, yes, weak as a baby.... Berna, my child, my poor little girl, I can do nothing. There's a mountain weighing me down. There's a slab of gold on my chest. They're burning me up. My veins are on fire. I can't come.... I can't, dear.... I'm tired...."

Then the fever, the ravings, the wild threshing of my pillow, all passed away, and I was left limp, weak, helpless, resigned to my fate.

I was on the sunny slope of convalescence. The Prodigal had remained with me as long as I was in danger, but now that I had turned the corner, he had gone back to the creeks, so that I was left with only my thoughts for company. As I turned and twisted on my narrow cot it seemed as if the time would never pass. All I wanted was to get better fast, and to get out again. Then, I thought, I would marry Berna and go "outside." I was sick of the country, of everything.

I was lying thinking over these things, when I became aware that the man in the cot to the right was trying to attract my attention. He had been brought in that very morning, said to have been kicked by a horse. One of his ribs was broken, and his face badly smashed. He was in great pain, but quite conscious, and he was making stealthy motions to me.

"Say, mate," he said, "I piped you off soon's I set me lamps on you. Don't youse know me?"

I looked at the bandaged face wonderingly.

"Don't you spot de man dat near let youse down de shaft?"

Then, with a great start, I saw it was the Worm.

"'Taint no horse done me up," he said in a hoarse whisper; "'twas a man. You know de man, de worst devil in all Alaska, Black Jack. Bad luck to him! He knocked me down and give me de leather. But I'm goin' to get even some day. I'm just laying for him. I wouldn't be in his shoes for de richest claim in de Klondike."

The man's eyes glittered vengefully between the white bandages.

"'Twas all on account of de little girl he done it. You know de girl I mean. Black Jack's dead stuck on her, an' de furder she stands him off de more set he is to get her. Youse don't know dat man. He's never had de cold mit yet."

"Tell me what's the matter, for Heaven's sake."

"Well, when youse didn't come, de little girl she got worried. I used to be doin' chores round de restaurant, an' she asks me to take a note up to you. So I said I would. But I got on a drunk dat day, an' for a week after I didn't draw a sober breath. When I gets around again I told her I'd seen you an' given you de note an' you was comin' in right away."

"Heaven forgive you for that."



"Yep, dat's what I say now. But it's all too late. Well, a week went on an' you never showed up, an' meantime Locasto was pesterin' her cruel. She got mighty peaked like, pale as a ghost, an' I could see she cried most all her nights. Den she gives me anudder note. She gives me a hundred dollars to take dat note to you. I said she could lay on me dis time. I was de hurry-up kid, an' I starts off. But Black Jack must have cottoned on, for he meets me back of de town an' taxes me wid takin' a message. Den he sets on me like a wild beast an' does me up good and proper. But I'll fix him yet."

"Where are the notes?" I cried.

"In de pocket of me coat. Tell de nurse to fetch in me clothes, an' I'll give dem to youse."

The nurse brought the clothes, but the little man was too sore to move.

"Feel in de inside pocket."

There were the notes, folded very small, and written in pencil. There was a strange faintness at my heart, and my fingers trembled as I opened them. Fear, fear was clutching me, compressing me in an agonising grip.

Here was the first.

"My Darling Boy: Why didn't you come? I was all ready for you. O, it was such a terrible disappointment. I've cried myself to sleep every night since. Has anything happened to you, dear? For Heaven's sake write or send a message. I can't bear the suspense.

"Your loving

"Berna."

Blankly, dully, almost mechanically, I read the second.

"O, come, my dear, at once. I'm in serious danger. He's grown desperate. Swears if he can't get me by fair means he'll have me by foul. I'm terribly afraid. Why ar'n't you here to protect me? Why have you failed me? O, my darling, have pity on your poor little girl. Come quickly before it is too late."

It was unsigned.

Heavens! I must go to her at once. I was well enough. I was all right again. Why would they not let me go to her? I would crawl on my hands and knees if need be. I was strong, so strong now.

Ha! there were the Worm's clothes. It was after midnight. The nurse had just finished her rounds. All was quiet in the ward.

Dizzily I rose and slipped into the frayed and greasy garments. There were the hospital slippers. I must wear them. Never mind a hat.

I was out in the street. I shuffled along, and people stared at me, but no one delayed me. I was at the restaurant now. She wasn't there. Ah! the cabin on the hill.

I was weaker than I had thought. Once or twice in a half-fainting condition I stopped and steadied myself by holding a sapling tree. Then the awful intuition of her danger possessed me, and gave me fresh strength. Many times I stumbled, cutting myself on the sharp boulders. Once I lay for a long time, half-unconscious, wondering if I would ever be able to rise. I reeled like a drunken man. The way seemed endless, yet stumbling, staggering on, there was the cabin at last.

A light was burning in the front room. Some one was at home at all events. Only a few steps more, yet once again I fell. I remember striking my face against a sharp rock. Then, on my hands and knees, I crawled to the door.

I raised myself and hammered with clenched fists. There was silence within, then an agitated movement. I knocked again. Was the door ever going to be opened? At last it swung inward, with a suddenness that precipitated me inside the room.

The Madam was standing over me where I had fallen. At sight of me she screamed. Surprise, fear, rage, struggled for mastery on her face. "It's him," she cried, "him." Peering over her shoulder, with ashy, horrified face, I saw her trembling husband.

"Berna," I gasped hoarsely. "Where is she? I want Berna. What are you doing to her, you devils? Give her to me. She's mine, my promised bride. Let me go to her, I say."

The woman barred the way.

All at once I realised that the air was heavy with a strange odour, the odour of chloroform. Frenzied with fear, I rushed forward.

Then the Amazon roused herself. With a cry of rage she struck me. Savagely both of them came for me. I struggled, I fought; but, weak as I was, they carried me before them and threw me from the door. I heard the lock shoot; I was outside; I was impotent. Yet behind those log walls.... Oh, it was horrible! horrible! Could such things be in God's world? And I could do nothing.

I was strong once more. I ran round to the back of the cabin. She was in there, I knew. I rushed at the window and threw myself against it. The storm frame had not been taken off. Crash! I burst through both sheets of glass. I was cruelly cut, bleeding in a dozen places, yet I was half into the room. There, in the dirty, drab light, I saw a face, the fiendish, rage-distorted face of my dream. It was Locasto.

He turned at the crash. With a curse he came at me. Then, as I hung half in, half out of the window, he clutched me by the throat. Using all his strength, he raised me further into the room, then he hurled me ruthlessly out onto the rocks outside.

I rose, reeling, covered with blood, blind, sick, speechless. Weakly I staggered to the window. My strength was leaving me. "O God, sustain me! Help me to save her."

Then I felt the world go blank. I swayed; I clutched at the walls; I fell.

There I lay in a ghastly, unconscious heap.

I had lost!



BOOK IV

THE VORTEX

He burned a hole in the frozen muck; He scratched the icy mould; And there in six-foot dirt he struck A sack or so of gold.

He burned a hole in the Decalogue, And then it came about— For Fortune's only a lousy rogue— His "pocket" petered out.

And lo! it was but a year all told, When there in the shadow grim, But six feet deep in the icy mould, They burned a hole for him.

—"The Yukoner."



CHAPTER I

"No, no, I'm all right. Really I am. Please leave me alone. You want me to laugh? Ha! Ha! There! Is that all right now?"

"No, it isn't all right. It's very far from all right, my boy; and this is where you and your little uncle here are going to have a real heart to heart talk."

It was in the big cabin on Gold Hill, and the Prodigal was addressing me. He went on:

"Now, look here, kid, when it comes to expressing my feelings I'm in the kindergarten class; when it comes to handing out the high-toned dope I drop my cue every time; but when I'm needed to do the solid pardner stunt then you don't need to holler for me—I'm there. Well, I'm giving you a straight line of talk. Ever since the start I've taken a strong notion to you. You've always been ace-high with me, and there never will come the day when you can't eat on my meal-ticket. We tackled the Trail of Trouble together. You were always wanting to lift the heavy end of the log, and when the God of Cussedness was doing his best to rasp a man down to his yellow streak, you showed up white all through. Say, kid, we've been in tight places together; we've been stacked up against hard times together: and now I'll be gol-darned if I'm going to stand by and see you go downhill, while the devil oils the bearings."

"Oh, I'm all right," I protested.

"Yes, you're all right," he echoed grimly. "In an impersonation of an 'all-right' man it's the hook for yours. I've seen 'all-right' men like you hitting the hurry trail for the boneyard before now. You're 'all right'! Why, for the last two hours you've been sitting with that 'just-break-the-news-to mother' expression of yours, and paying no more heed to my cheerful brand of conversation than if I had been a measly four-flusher. You don't eat more than a sick sparrow, and often you don't bat an eye all night. You're looking worse than the devil in a gale of wind. You've lost your grip, my boy. You don't care whether school keeps or not. In fact, if it wasn't for your folks, you'd as lief take a short cut across the Great Divide."

"You're going it a little strong, old man."

"Oh no, I'm not. You know you're sick of everything. Feel as if life's a sort of penitentiary, and you've just got to do time. You don't expect to get any more fun out of it. Look at me. Every day's my sunshine day. If the sky's blue I like it; if it's grey I like it just as well. I never worry. What's the use? Yesterday's a dead one; to-morrow's always to-morrow. All we've got's the 'now,' and it's up to us to live it for all we're worth. You can use up more human steam to the square inch in worrying than you can to the square yard in hard work. Eliminate worry and you've got the only system."

"It's all very well for you to preach," I said, "you forget I've been a pretty sick man."

"That's no nursemaid's dream. You almost cashed in. Typhoid's a serious proposition at the best; but when you take a crazy streak on top of it, make a midnight getaway from the sick-ward and land up on the Slide looking as if you'd been run through a threshing machine, well, you're sure letting death get a short option on you. And you gave up. You didn't want to fight. You shirked, but your youth and constitution fought for you. They healed your wounds, they soothed your ravings, they cooled your fever. They were a great team, and they pulled you through. Seems as if they'd pulled you through a knot-hole, but they were on to their job. And you weren't one bit grateful—seemed to think they had no business to butt in."

"My hurts are more than physical."

"Yes, I know; there was that girl. You seemed to have a notion that that was the only girl on God's green brush-pile. As I camped there by your bedside listening to your ravings, and getting a strangle-hold on you when you took it into your head to get funny, you blabbed out the whole yarn. Oh, sonny, why didn't you tell your uncle? Why didn't you put me wise? I could have given you the right steer. Have you ever known me handle a job I couldn't make good at? I'm a whole matrimonial bureau rolled into one. I'd have had you prancing to the tune of the wedding march before now. But you kept mum as a mummy. Wouldn't even tell your old pard. Now you've lost her."

"Yes, I've lost her."

"Did you ever see her after you came out of the hospital?"

"Once, once only. It was the first day. I was as thin as a rail, as white as the pillow from which I had just raised my head. Death's reprieve was written all over me. I dragged along wearily, leaning on a stick. I was thinking of her, thinking, thinking always. As I scanned the faces of the crowds that thronged the streets, I thought only of her face. Then suddenly she was before me. She looked like a ghost, poor little thing; and for a fluttering moment we stared at each other, she and I, two wan, weariful ghosts."

"Yes, what did she say?"

"Say! she said nothing. She just looked at me. Her face was cold as ice. She looked at me as if she wanted to pity me. Then into her eyes there came a shadow of bitterness, of bitterness and despair such as might gloom the eyes of a lost soul. It unnerved me. It seemed as if she was regarding me almost with horror, as if I were a sort of a leper. As I stood there, I thought she was going to faint. She seemed to sway a moment. Then she drew a great, gasping breath, and turning on her heel she was gone."

"She cut you?"

"Yes, cut me dead, old fellow. And my only thought was of love for her, eternal love. But I'll never forget the look on her face as she turned away. It was as if I had lashed her with a whip. My God!"

"And you've never seen her since?"

"No, never. That was enough, wasn't it? She didn't want to speak to me any more, never wanted to set eyes on me any more. I went back to the ward; then, in a little, I came on here. My body was living, but my heart was dead. It will never live again."

"Oh, rot! You mustn't let the thing down you like that. It's going to kill you in the end. Buck up! Be a man! If you don't care to live for yourself, live for others. Anyway, it's likely all for the best. Maybe love had you locoed. Maybe she wasn't really good. See now how she lives openly with Locasto. They call her the Madonna; they say she looks more like a virgin-martyr than the mistress of a dissolute man."

I rose and looked at him, conscious that my face was all twisted with the pain of the thought.

"Look here," I said, "never did God put the breath of life into a better girl. There's been foul play. I know that girl better than any one in the world, and if every living being were to tell me she wasn't good I would tell them they lied, they lied. I would burn at the stake upholding that girl."

"Then why did she turn you down so cruelly?"

"I don't know; I can't understand it. I know so little about women. I have not wavered a moment. To-day in my loneliness and heartbreak I care and hunger for her more than ever. She's always here, right here in my head, and no power can drive her out. Let them say of her what they will, I would marry her to-morrow. It's killing me. I've aged ten years in the last few months. Oh, if I only could forget."

He looked at me thoughtfully.

"I say, old man, do you ever hear from your old lady?"

"Every mail."

"You've often told me of your home. Say! just give us a mental frame-up of it."

"Glengyle? Yes. I can see the old place now, as plainly as a picture: the green, dimpling hills all speckled with sheep; the grey house nestling snugly in a grove of birch; the wild water of the burn leaping from black pool to pool, just mad with the joy of life; the midges dancing over the water in the still sunshine, and the trout jumping for them—oh, it's the bonny, bonny place. You would think so too. You would like it, tramping knee-deep in the heather, to see the moorcock rise whirring at your feet; you would like to set sail with the fisher folk after the silver herring. It would make you feel good to see the calm faces of the shepherds, the peace in the eyes of the women. Ay, that was the best of it all, the Rest of it, the calm of it. I was pretty happy in those days."

"You were happy—then why not go back? That's your proper play; go back to your Mother. She wants you. You're pretty well heeled now. A little money goes a long way over there. You can count on thirty thousand. You'll be comfortable; you'll devote yourself to the old lady; you'll be happy again. Time's a regular steam-roller when it comes to smoothing out the rough spots in the past. You'll forget it all, this place, this girl. It'll all seem like the after effects of a midnight Welsh rabbit. You've got mental indigestion. I hate to see you go. I'm really sorry to lose you; but it's your only salvation, so go, go!"

Never had I thought of it before. Home! how sweet the word seemed. Mother! yes, Mother would comfort me as no one else could. She would understand. Mother and Garry! A sudden craving came over me to see them again. Maybe with them I could find relief from this awful agony of heart, this thing that I could scarce bear to think of, yet never ceased to think of. Home! that was the solution of it all. Ah me! I would go home.

"Yes," I said, "I can't go too soon; I'll start to-morrow."

So I rose and proceeded to gather together my few belongings. In the early morning I would start out. No use prolonging the business of my going. I would say good-bye to those two partners of mine, with a grip of the hand, a tear in the eye, a husky: "Take care of yourself." That would be all. Likely I would never see them again.

Jim came in and sat down quietly. The old man had been very silent of late. Putting on his spectacles, he took out his well-worn Bible and opened it. Back in Dawson there was a man whom he hated with the hate that only death can end, but for the peace of his soul he strove to conquer it. The hate slumbered, yet at times it stirred, and into the old man's eyes there came the tiger-look that had once made him a force and a fear. Woe betide his enemy if that tiger ever woke.

"I've been a-thinkin' out a scheme," said Jim suddenly, "an' I'm a-goin' to put all of that twenty-five thousand of mine back into the ground. You know us old miners are gamblers to the end. It's not the gold, but the gettin' of it. It's the excitement, the hope, the anticipation of one's luck that counts. We're fighters, an' we've just got to keep on fightin'. We can't quit. There's the ground, and there's the precious metals it's a-tryin' to hold back on us. It's up to us to get them out. It's for the good of humanity. The miner an' the farmer rob no one. They just get down to that old ground an' coax it an' beat it an' bully it till it gives up. They're working for the good of humanity—the farmer an' the miner." The old man paused sententiously.

"Well, I can't quit this minin' business. I've just got to go on so long's I've got health an' strength; an' I'm a-goin' to shove all I've got once more into the muck. I stand to make a big pile, or lose my wad."

"What's your scheme, Jim?"

"It's just this: I'm goin' to install a hydraulic plant on my Ophir Creek claim, I've got a great notion of that claim. It's an out-of-sight proposition for workin' with water. There's a little stream runs down the hill, an' the hill's steep right there. There's one hundred feet of fall, an' in Spring a mighty powerful bunch of water comes a-tumblin' down. Well, I'm goin' to dam it up above, bring it down a flume, hitch on a little giant, an' turn it loose to rip an' tear at that there ground. I'm goin' to begin a new era in Klondike minin'."

"Bully for you, Jim."

"The values are there in the ground, an' I'm sick of the old slow way of gettin' them out. This looks mighty good to me. Anyway, I'm a-goin' to give it a trial. It's just the start of things; you'll see others will follow suit. The individual miner's got to go; it's only a matter of time. Some day you'll see this whole country worked over by them big power dredges they've got down in Californy. You mark my words, boys; the old-fashioned miner's got to go."

"What are you going to do?"

"Well, I've written out for piping an' a monitor, an' next Spring I hope I'll have the plant in workin' order. The stuff's on the way now. Hullo! Come in!"

The visitors were Mervin and Hewson on their way to Dawson. These two men had been successful beyond their dreams. It was just like finding money the way fortune had pushed it in front of their noses. They were offensively prosperous; they reeked of success.

In both of them a great change had taken place, a change only too typical of the gold-camp. They seemed to have thawed out; they were irrepressibly genial; yet instead of that restraint that had formerly distinguished them, there was a grafted quality of weakness, of flaccidity, of surrender to the enervating vices of the town.

Mervin was remarkably thin. Dark hollows circled his eyes, and a curious nervousness twisted his mouth. He was "a terror for the women," they said. He lavished his money on them faster than he made it. He was vastly more companionable than formerly, but somehow you felt his virility, his fighting force had gone.

In Hewson the change was even more marked. Those iron muscles had couched themselves in easy flesh; his cheeks sagged; his eyes were bloodshot and untidy. Nevertheless he was more of a good fellow, talked rather vauntingly of his wealth, and affected a patronising manner. He was worth probably two hundred thousand, and he drank a bottle of brandy a day.

In the case of these two men, as in the case of a thousand others in the gold-camp, it seemed as if easy, unhoped-for affluence was to prove their undoing. On the trail they had been supreme; in fen or forest, on peak or plain, they were men among men, fighting with nature savagely, exultantly. But when the fight was over their arms rested, their muscles relaxed, they yielded to sensuous pleasures. It seemed as if to them victory really meant defeat.

As I went on with my packing I paid but little heed to their talk. What mattered it to me now, this babble of dumps and dust, of claims and clean-ups? I was going to thrust it all behind me, blot it clean out of my memory, begin my life anew. It would be a larger, more luminous life. I would live for others. Home! Mother! again how exquisitely my heart glowed at the thought of them.

Then all at once I pricked up my ears. They were talking of the town, of the men and women who were making it famous (or rather infamous), when suddenly they spoke the name of Locasto.

"He's gone off," Mervin was saying; "gone off on a big stampede. He got pretty thick with some of the Peel River Indians, and found they knew of a ledge of high-grade, free-milling quartz somewhere out there in the Land Back of Beyond. He had a sample of it, and you could just see the gold shining all through it. It was great stuff. Jack Locasto's the last man to turn down a chance like that. He's the worst gambler in the Northland, and no amount of wealth will ever satisfy him. So he's off with an Indian and one companion, that little Irish satellite of his, Pat Doogan. They have six months' grub. They'll be away all winter."

"What's become of that girl of his?" asked Hewson, "the last one he's been living with? You remember she came in on the boat with us. Poor little kid! Blast that man anyway. He's not content with women of his own kind, he's got to get his clutches on the best of them. That was a good little girl before he got after her. If she was a friend of mine I'd put a bullet in his ugly heart."

Hewson growled like a wrathful bear, but Mervin smiled his cynical smile.

"Oh, you mean the Madonna," he said; "why, she's gone on the dance-halls."

They continued to talk of other things, but I did not hear them any more. I was in a trance, and I only aroused when they rose to go.

"Better say good-bye to the kid here," said the Prodigal; "he's going to the old country to-morrow."

"No, I'm not," I answered sullenly; "I'm just going as far as Dawson."

He stared and expostulated, but my mind was made up. I would fight, fight to the last.



CHAPTER II

Berna on the dance-halls—words cannot convey all that this simple phrase meant to me. For two months I had been living in a dull apathy of pain, but this news galvanised me into immediate action.

For although there were many degrees of dance-hall depravity, at the best it meant a brand of ineffaceable shame. She had lived with Locasto, had been recognised as his mistress—that was bad enough; but the other—to be at the mercy of all, to be classed with the harpies that preyed on the Man with the Poke, the vampires of the gold-camp. Berna— Oh, it was unspeakable! The thought maddened me. The needle-point of suffering that for weeks had been boring into my brain seemed to have pierced its core at last.

When the Prodigal expostulated with me I laughed—a bitter, mirthless laugh.

"I'm going to Dawson," I said, "and if it was hell itself, I'd go there for that girl. I don't care what any one thinks. Home, society, honour itself, let them all go; they don't matter now. I was a fool to think I could ever give her up, a fool. Now I know that as long as there's life and strength in my body, I'll fight for her. Oh, I'm not the sentimentalist I was six months ago. I've lived since then. I can hold my own now. I can meet men on their own level. I can fight, I can win. I don't care any more, after what I've gone through. I don't set any particular value on my life. I'll throw it away as recklessly as the best of them. I'm going to have a fierce fight for that girl, and if I lose there'll be no more 'me' left to fight. Don't try to reason with me. Reason be damned! I'm going to Dawson, and a hundred men couldn't hold me."

"You seem to have some new stunts in your repertoire," he said, looking at me curiously; "you've got me guessing. Sometimes I think you're a candidate for the dippy-house, then again I think you're on to yourself. There's a grim set to your mouth and a hard look in your eyes that I didn't use to see. Maybe you can hold up your end. Well, anyway, if you will go I wish you good luck."

So, bidding good-bye to the big cabin, with my two partners looking ruefully after me, I struck off down Bonanza. It was mid-October. A bitter wind chilled me to the marrow. Once more the land lay stark beneath its coverlet of snow, and the sky was wan and ominous. I travelled fast, for a painful anxiety gripped me, so that I scarce took notice of the improved trail, of the increased activity, of the heaps of tailings built up with brush till they looked like walls of a fortification. All I thought of was Dawson and Berna.

How curious it was, this strange new strength, this indifference to self, to physical suffering, to danger, to public opinion! I thought only of the girl. I would make her marry me. I cared nothing for what had happened to her. I might be a pariah, an outcast for the rest of my days; at least I would save her, shield her, cherish her. The thought uplifted me, exalted me. I had suffered beyond expression. I had rearranged my set of ideas; my concept of life, of human nature, had broadened and deepened. What did it matter if physically they had wronged her? Was not the pure, virgin soul of her beyond their reach?

I was just in time to see the last boat go out. Already the river was "throwing ice," and every day the jagged edges of it crept further towards midstream. An immense and melancholy mob stood on the wharf as the little steamer backed off into the channel. There were uproarious souls on board, and many women of the town screaming farewells to their friends. On the boat all was excited, extravagant joy; on the wharf, a sorry attempt at resignation.

The last boat! they watched her as her stern paddle churned the freezing water; they watched her forge her slow way through the ever-thickening ice-flakes; they watched her in the far distance battling with the Klondike current; then, sad and despondent, they turned away to their lonely cabins. Never had their exile seemed so bitter. A few more days and the river would close tight as a drum. The long, long night would fall on them, and for nigh on eight weary months they would be cut off from the outside world.

Yet soon, very soon, a mood of reconciliation would set in. They would begin to make the best of things. To feed that great Octopus, the town, the miners would flock in from the creeks with treasure hoarded up in baking-powder tins; the dance-halls and gambling-places would absorb them; the gaiety would go on full swing, and there would seem but little change in the glittering abandon of the gold-camp. As I paced its sidewalks once more I marvelled at its growth. New streets had been made; the stores boasted expensive fittings and gloried in costly goods; in the bar-rooms were splendid mirrors and ornate woodwork; the restaurants offered European delicacies; all was on a new scale of extravagance, of garish display, of insolent wealth.

Everywhere the man with the fat "poke" was in evidence. He came into town unshorn, wild-looking, often raggedly clad, yet always with the same wistful hunger in his eyes. You saw that look, and it took you back to the dark and dirt and drudgery of the claim, the mirthless months of toil, the crude cabin with its sugar barrel of ice behind the door, its grease light dimly burning, its rancid smell of stale food. You saw him lying smoking his strong pipe, looking at that can of nuggets on the rough shelf, and dreaming of what it would mean to him—out there where the lights glittered and the gramophones blared. Surely, if patience, endurance, if grim, unswerving purpose, if sullen, desperate toil deserved a reward, this man had a peckful of pleasure for his due.

And always that hungry, wistful look. The women with the painted cheeks knew that look; the black-jack boosters knew it; the barkeeper with his knock-out drops knew it. They waited for him; he was their "meat."

Yet in a few days your wild and woolly man is transformed, and no longer does your sympathy go out towards him. Shaven and shorn, clad in silken underwear, with patent leather shoes, and a suit in New York style, you absolutely fail to recognise him as your friend of the moccasins and mackinaw coat. He is smoking a dollar Laranago, he has half a dozen whiskies "under his belt," and later on he has a "date" with a lady singer of the Pavilion Theatre. He is having a "whale" of a good time, he tells you; you wonder how long he will last.

Not for long. Sharp and short and sweet it is. He is brought up with a jerk, and the Dago Queen, for whom he has bought so much wine at twenty dollars a bottle, has no recognition for him in her flashing eyes. He has been "taken down the line," "trimmed to a finish" by an artist in the business. Ruefully he turns his poke inside out—not a "colour." He cannot even command the price of a penitential three-fingers of rye. Such is one of the commonest phases of life in the gold-camp.

As I strolled the streets I saw many a familiar face. Mosher I saw. He had grown very fat, and was talking to a diminutive woman with heavy blond hair (she must have weighed about ninety-five pounds, I think). They went off together.

A knife-edged wind was sweeping down from the north, and men in bulging coonskin coats filled up the sidewalks. At the Aurora corner I came across the Jam-wagon. He was wearing a jacket of summer flannels, and, as if to suggest extra warmth, he had turned up its narrow collar. In his trembling fingers he held an emaciated cigarette, which he inhaled avidly. He looked wretched, pinched with hunger, peaked with cold, but he straightened up when he saw me into a semblance of well-being. Then, in a little, he sagged forward, and his eyes went dull and abject. It was a business of the utmost delicacy to induce him to accept a small loan. I knew it would only plunge him more deeply into the mire; but I could not bear to see him suffer.

I went into the Parisian Restaurant. It was more glittering, more raffish, more clamant of the tenderloin than ever. There were men waiters in the conventional garb of waiterdom, and there was Madam, harder looking and more vulturish. You wondered if such a woman could have a soul, and what was the end and aim of her being. There she sat, a creature of rapacity and sordid lust. I marched up to her and asked abruptly:

"Where's Berna?"

She gave a violent start. There was a quality of fear in her bold eyes. Then she laughed, a hard, jarring laugh.

"In the Tivoli," she said.

Strange again! Now that the worst had come to pass, and I had suffered all that it was in my power to suffer, this new sense of strength and mastery had come to me. It seemed as if some of the iron spirit of the land had gotten into my blood, a grim, insolent spirit that made me fearless; at times a cold cynical spirit, a spirit of rebellion, of anarchy, of aggression. The greatest evil had befallen me. Life could do no more to harm me. I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. I cared for no man. I despised them, and, to back me in my bitterness, I had twenty-five thousand dollars in the bank.

I was still weak from my illness and my long mush had wearied me, so I went into a saloon and called for drinks. I felt the raw whisky burn my throat. I tingled from head to foot with a strange, pleasing warmth. Suddenly the bar, with its protecting rod of brass, seemed to me a very desirable place, bright, warm, suggestive of comfort and good-fellowship. How agreeably every one was smiling! Indeed, some were laughing for sheer joy. A big, merry-hearted miner called for another round, and I joined in.

Where was that bitter feeling now? Where that morbid pain at my heart? As I drank it all seemed to pass away. Magical change! What a fool I was! What was there to make such a fuss about? Take life easy. Laugh alike at the good and bad of it. It was all a farce anyway. What would it matter a hundred years from now? Why were we put into this world to be tortured? I, for one, would protest. I would writhe no more in the strait-jacket of existence. Here was escape, heartsease, happiness—here in this bottled impishness. Again I drank.

What a rotten world it all was! But I had no hand in the making of it, and it wasn't my task to improve it. I was going to get the best I could out of it. Eat, drink and be merry, that was the last word of philosophy. Others seemed to be able to extract all kinds of happiness from things as they are, so why not I? In any case, here was the solution of my troubles. Better to die happily drunk than miserably sober. I was not drinking from weakness. Oh no! I was drinking with deliberate intent to kill pain.

How wonderfully strong I felt! I smashed my clenched fist against the bar. My knuckles were bruised and bleeding, but I felt no pain. I was so light of foot, I imagined I could jump over the counter. I ached to fight some one. Then all at once came the thought of Berna. It came with tragical suddenness, with poignant force. Intensely it smote me as never before. I could have burst into maudlin tears.

"What's the matter, Slim?" asked a mouldy mannikin, affectionately hanging on to my arm.

Disgustedly I looked at him.

"Take your filthy paws off me," I said.

His jaw dropped and he stared at me. Then, before he could draw on his fund of profanity, I burst through the throng and made for the door.

I was drunk, deplorably drunk, and I was bound for the Tivoli.



CHAPTER III

I wish it to be understood that I make no excuses for myself at this particular stage of my chronicle. I am only conscious of a desire to tell the truth. Many of the stronger-minded will no doubt condemn me; many of those inclined to a rigid system of morality will be disgusted with me; but, however it may be, I will write plainly and without reserve.

When I reeled out of the Grubstake Saloon I was in a peculiar state of exaltation. No longer was I conscious of the rasping cold, and it seemed to me I could have couched me in the deep snow as cosily as in a bed of down. Surpassingly brilliant were the lights. They seemed to convey to me a portentous wink. They twinkled with jovial cheer. What a desirable place the world was, after all!

With an ebullient sense of eloquence, of extravagant oratory, I longed for a sympathetic ear. An altruistic emotion pervaded me. Who would suspect, thought I, as I walked a little too circumspectly amid the throng, that my heart was aglow, that I was tensing my muscles in the pride of their fitness, that my brain was a bewildering kaleidoscope of thoughts and images?

Gramophones were braying in every conceivable key. Brazen women were leering at me. Potbellied men regarded me furtively. Alluringly the gambling-dens and dancing-dives invited me. The town was a giant spider drawing in its prey, and I was the prey, it seemed. Others there were in plenty, men with the eager, wistful eyes; but who was there so eager and wistful as I? And I didn't care any more. Strike up the music! On with the dance! Only one life have we to live. Ah! there was the Tivoli.

To the right as I entered was a palatial bar set off with burnished brass, bevelled mirrors and glittering, vari-coloured pyramids of costly liqueurs. Up to the bar men were bellying, and the bartenders in white jackets were mixing drinks with masterly dexterity. It was a motley crowd. There were men in broadcloth and fine linen, men in blue shirts and mud-stiffened overalls, grey-bearded elders and beardless boys. It was a noisy crowd, laughing, brawling, shouting, singing. Here was the foam of life, with never a hint of the muddy sediment underneath.

To the left I had a view of the gambling-room, a glimpse of green tables, of spinning balls, of cool men, with shades over their eyes, impassively dealing. There were huge wheels of fortune, keno tables, crap outfits, faro layouts, and, above all, the dainty, fascinating roulette. Everything was in full swing. Miners with flushed faces and a wild excitement in their eyes were plunging recklessly; others, calm, alert, anxious, were playing cautiously. Here and there were the fevered faces of women. Gold coin was stacked on the tables, while a man with a pair of scales was weighing dust from the tendered pokes.

In front of me was a double swing-door painted in white and gold, and, pushing through this, for the first time I found myself in a Dawson dance-hall.

I remember being struck by the gorgeousness of it, its glitter and its glow. Who would have expected, up in this bleak-visaged North, to find such a fairyland of a place? It was painted in white and gold, and set off by clusters of bunched lights. There was much elaborate scroll-work and ornate decoration. Down each side, raised about ten feet from the floor, and supported on gilt pillars, were little private boxes hung with curtains of heliotrope silk. At the further end of the hall was a stage, and here a vaudeville performance was going on.

I sat down on a seat at the very back of the audience. Before me were row after row of heads, mostly rough, rugged and unwashed. Their faces were eager, rapt as those of children. They were enjoying, with the deep satisfaction of men who for many a weary month had been breathing the free, unbranded air of the Wild. The sensuous odour of patchouli was strangely pleasant to them; the sight of a woman was thrillingly sweet; the sound of a song was ravishing. Looking at many of those toil-grooved faces one could see that there was no harm in their hearts. They were honest, uncouth, simple; they were just like children, the children of the Wild.

A woman of generous physique was singing in a shrill, nasal voice a pathetic ballad. She sang without expression, bringing her hands with monotonous gestures alternately to her breast. Her squat, matronly figure, beef from the heels up, looked singularly absurd in her short skirt. Her face was excessively over-painted, her mouth good-naturedly large, and her eyes out of their slit-like lids leered at the audience.

"Ain't she great?" said a tall bean-pole of a man on my right, as she finished off with a round of applause. "There's some class to her work."

He looked at me in a confidential way, and his pale-blue eyes were full of rapturous appreciation. Then he did something that surprised me. He tugged open his poke and, dipping into it, he produced a big nugget. Twisting this in a scrap of paper, he rose up, long, lean and awkward, and with careful aim he threw it on the stage.

"Here ye are, Lulu," he piped in his shrill voice. The woman, turning in her exit, picked up the offering, gave her admirer a wide, gold-toothed smile, and threw him an emphatic kiss. As the man sat down I could see his mouth twisting with excitement, and his watery blue eyes snapped with pleasure.

"By heck," he said, "she's great, ain't she? Many's the bottle of wine I've opened for that there girl. Guess she'll be glad when she hears old Henry's in town again. Henry's my name, Hard-pan Henry they call me, an' I've got a claim on Hunker. Many's the wallopin' poke have I toted into town an' blowed in on that there girl. An' I just guess this one'll go the same gait. Well, says I, what's the odds? I'm havin' a good time for my money. When it's gone there's lots more in the ground. It ain't got no legs. It can't run away."

He chuckled and hefted his poke in a horny hand. There was a flutter of the heliotrope curtains, and the face of Lulu, peeping over the plush edge of a box, smiled bewitchingly upon him. With another delighted chuckle the old man went to join her.

"Darned old fool," said a young man on my left. He looked as if his veins were chuckful of health; his skin was as clear as a girl's, his eye honest and fearless. He was dressed in mackinaw, and wore a fur cap with drooping ear-flaps.

"He's the greatest mark in the country," the Youth went on. "He's got no more brains than God gave geese. All the girls are on to him. Before he can turn round that old bat up there will have him trimmed to a finish. He'll be doing flip-flaps, and singing ''Way Down on the Suwanee River' standing on his head. Then the girl will pry him loose from his poke, and to-morrow he'll start off up the creek, teetering and swearing he's had a dooce of a good time. He's the easiest thing on earth."

The Youth paused to look on a new singer. She was a soubrette, trim, dainty and confident. She wore a blond wig, and her eyes in their pits of black were alluringly bright. Paint was lavished on her face in violent dabs of rose and white, and the inevitable gold teeth gleamed in her smile. She wore a black dress trimmed with sequins, stockings of black, a black velvet band around her slim neck. She was greeted with much applause, and she began to sing in a fairly sweet voice.

"That's Nellie Lestrange," said the Youth. "She's a great rustler—Touch-the-button-Nell, they call her. They say that when she gets a jay into a box it's all day with him. She's such a nifty wine-winner the end of her thumb's calloused pressing the button for fresh bottles."

Touch-the-button-Nell was singing a comic ditty of a convivial order. She put into it much vivacity, appealing to the audience to join in the chorus with a pleading, "Now all together, boys." She had tripping steps and dainty kicks that went well with the melody. When she went off half a dozen men rose in their places, and aimed nuggets at her. She captured them, then, with a final saucy flounce of her skirt, made her smiling exit.

"By Gosh!" said the Youth, "I wonder these fellows haven't got more savvy. You wouldn't catch me chucking away an ounce on one of those fairies. No, sir! Nothing doing! I've got a five-thousand-dollar poke in the bank, and to-morrow I'll be on my way outside with a draft for every cent of it. A certain little farm 'way back in Vermont looks pretty good to me, and a little girl that don't know the use of face powder, bless her. She's waiting for me."

The excitement of the liquor had died away in me, and what with the heat and smoke of the place, I was becoming very drowsy. I was almost dozing off to sleep when some one touched me on the arm. It was a negro waiter I had seen dodging in and out of the boxes, and known as the Black Prince.

"Dey's a lady up'n de box wants to speak with yuh, sah," he said politely.

"Who is it?" I asked in surprise.

"Miss Labelle, sah, Miss Birdie Labelle."

I started. Who in the Klondike had not heard of Birdie Labelle, the eldest of the three sisters, who married Stillwater Willie? A thought flashed through me that she could tell me something of Berna.

"All right," I said; "I'll come."

I followed him upstairs, and in a moment I was ushered into the presence of the famous soubrette.

"Hullo, kid!" she exclaimed, "sit down. I saw you in the audience and kind-a took a notion to your face. How d'ye do?"

She extended a heavily bejewelled hand. She was plump, pleasant-looking, with a piquant smile and flaxen hair. I ordered the waiter to bring her a bottle of wine.

"I've heard a lot about you," I said tentatively.

"Yes, I guess so," she answered. "Most folks have up here. It's a sort of reflected glory. I guess if it hadn't been for Bill I'd never have got into the limelight at all."

She sipped her champagne thoughtfully.

"I came in here in '97, and it was then I met Bill. He was there with the coin all right. We got hitched up pretty quick, but he was such a mut I soon got sick of him. Then I got skating round with another guy. Well, an egg famine came along. There was only nine hundred samples of hen fruit in town, and one store had a corner on them. I went down to buy some. Lord! how I wanted them eggs. I kept thinking how I'd have them done, shipwrecked, two on a raft or sunny side up, when who should come along but Bill. He sees what I want, and quick as a flash what does he do but buy up the whole bunch at a dollar apiece! 'Now,' says he to me, 'if you want eggs for breakfast just come home where you belong.'

"Well, say, I was just dying for them eggs, so I comes to my milk like a lady. I goes home with Bill."

She shook her head sadly, and once more I filled up her glass.

She prattled on with many a gracious smile, and I ordered another bottle of wine. In the next box I could hear the squeaky laugh of Hard-pan Henry and the teasing tones of his inamorata. The visits of the Black Prince to this box with fresh bottles had been fast and furious, and at last I heard the woman cry in a querulous voice: "Say, that black man coming in so often gives me a pain. Why don't you order a case?"

Then the man broke in with his senile laugh:

"All right, Lulu, whatever you say goes. Say, Prince, tote along a case, will you?"

Surely, thought I, there's no fool like an old fool.

A little girl was singing, a little, winsome girl with a sweet childish voice and an innocent face. How terribly out of place she looked in that palace of sin. She sang a simple, old-world song full of homely pathos and gentle feeling. As she sang she looked down on those furrowed faces, and I saw that many eyes were dimmed with tears. The rough men listened in rapt silence as the childish treble rang out:

"Darling, I am growing old; Silver threads among the gold Shine upon my brow to-day; Life is fading fast away."

Then from behind the scenes a pure alto joined in and the two voices, blending in exquisite harmony, went on:

"But, my darling, you will be, will be, Always young and fair to me. Yes, my darling, you will be Always young and fair to me."

As the last echo died away the audience rose as one man, and a shower of nuggets pelted on the stage. Here was something that touched their hearts, stirred in them strange memories of tenderness, brought before them half-forgotten scenes of fireside happiness.

"It's a shame to let that kid work in the halls," said Miss Labelle. There were tears in her eyes, too, and she hurriedly blinked them away.

Then the curtain fell. Men were clearing the floor for the dance, so, bidding the lady adieu, I went downstairs.



CHAPTER IV

I found the Youth awaiting me.

"Say, pardner," said he, "I was just getting a bit anxious about you. I thought sure that fairy had you in tow for a sucker. I'm going to stay right with you, and you're not going to shake me. See!"

"All right," I said; "come on and we'll watch the dance."

So we got in the front row of spectators, while behind us the crowd packed as closely as matches in a box. The champagne I had taken had again aroused in me that vivid sense of joy and strength and colour. Again the lights were effulgent, the music witching, the women divine. As I swayed a little I clutched unsteadily at the Youth. He looked at me curiously.

"Brace up, old man," he said. "Guess you're not often in town. You're not much used to the dance-hall racket."

"No," I assured him.

"Well," he continued, "it's the rottenest game ever. I've seen more poor beggars put plumb out of business by the dance-halls than by all the saloons and gambling-joints put together. It's the game of catching the sucker brought to the point of perfection, and there's very few cases where it fails."

He perceived I was listening earnestly, and he warmed up to his subject.

"You see, the boys get in after they've been out on the claim for six months at a stretch, and town looks mighty good to them. The music sounds awful nice, and the women, well, they look just like angels. The boys are all right, but they've got that mad craving for the sight of a woman a man gets after he's been off out in the Wild, and these women have got the captivation of men down to a fine art. Once one of them gets to looking at you with eyes that eat right into you, and soft white hands, and pretty coaxing ways, well, it's mighty hard to hold back. A man's a fool to come near these places if he's got a poke—'cept, like me, he knows the ropes and he's right onto himself."

The Youth said this with quite a complacent air. He went on:

"These girls work on a percentage basis. You'll notice every time you buy them a drink the waiter gives them a check. That means that when the night's over they cash in and get twenty-five per cent, of the money you've spent on them. That's how they're so keen on ordering fresh bottles. Sometimes they'll say a bottle's gone flat before it's empty, and have you order another. Or else they'll pour half of it into the cuspidor when you're not looking. Then, when you get too full to notice the difference, they'll run in ginger ale on you. Or else they'll get you ordering by the case, and have half a dozen dummy bottles in it. Oh, there's all kinds of schemes these box rustlers are on to. When you pay for a drink you toss over your poke, and they take the price out. Do you think they're particular to a quarter ounce or so? No, sir! and you always get the short end of it. It's a bad game to go up against."

The Youth looked at me as though proud of his superior sophistication.

The floor was cleared. Girls were now coming from behind the stage, preening themselves and chaffing with the crowd. The orchestra struck up some jubilant ragtime that set the heart dancing and the heels tapping in tune. Brighter than ever seemed the lights; more dazzling the white and gilt of the walls. Some of the girls were balancing lightly to a waltz rhythm. There was a witching grace in their movements, and the Youth watched them intently. He looked down at his feet clad in old moccasins.

"Gee, I'd like just to have one spin," he said; "just one before I leave the darned old country for good. I was always crazy about dancing. I'd ride thirty miles to attend a dance back home."

His eyes grew very wistful. Suddenly the music stopped and the floor-master came forward. He was a tall, dark man with a rich and vibrant baritone voice.

"That's the best spieler in the Yukon," said the Youth.

"Come on, boys," boomed the spieler. "Look alive there. Don't keep the ladies waiting. Take your hands out of your pockets and get in the game. Just going to begin, a dreamy waltz or a nice juicy two-step, whichever you prefer. Hey, professor, strike up that waltz!"

Once more the music swelled out.

"How's that, boys? Doesn't that make your feet like feathers? Come on, boys! Here you are for the nice, glossy floor and the nice, flossy girls. Here you are! Here you are! That's right, select your partners! Swing your honeys! Hurry up there! Just a-goin' to begin. What's the matter with you fellows? Wake up! a dance won't break you. Come on! don't be a cheap skate. The girls are fine, fit and fairy-like, the music's swell and the floor's elegant. Come on, boys!"

There was a compelling power in his voice, and already a number of couples were waltzing round. The women were exquisite in their grace and springy lightness. They talked as they danced, gazing with languishing eyes and siren smiles at the man of the moment.

Some of them, who had not got partners, were picking out individuals from the crowd and coaxing them to come forward. A drunken fellow staggered onto the floor and grabbed a girl. She was young, dainty and pretty, but she showed no repugnance for him. Round and round he cavorted, singing and whooping, a wild, weird object; when, suddenly, he tripped and fell, bringing her down with him. The crowd roared; but the girl good-naturedly picked him up, and led him off to the bar.

A man in a greasy canvas suit with mucklucks on his feet had gone onto the floor. His hair was long and matted, his beard wild and rank. He was dancing vehemently, and there was the glitter of wild excitement in his eyes. He looked as if he had not bathed for years, but again I could see no repulsion in the face of the handsome brunette with whom he was waltzing. Dance after dance they had together, locked in each other's arms.

"That's a 'live one,'" said the Youth. "He's just come in from Dominion with a hundred ounces, and it won't last him over the night. Amber, there, will get it all. She won't let the other girls go near. He's her game."

Between dances the men promenaded to the bar and treated their companions to a drink. In the same free, trusting way they threw over their pokes to the bartender and had the price weighed out. The dances were very short, and the drinks very frequent.

Madder and madder grew the merriment. The air was hot; the odour of patchouli mingled with the stench of stale garments and the reek of alcohol. Men dripping with sweat whirled round in wild gyrations. Some of them danced beautifully; some merely shuffled over the floor. It did not make any difference to the girls. They were superbly muscular and used to the dragging efforts of novices. After a visit to the bar back they came once more, licking their lips, and fell to with fresh energy.

There was no need to beg the crowd now. A wave of excitement seemed to have swept over them. They clamoured to get a dance. The "live one" whooped and pranced on his wild career, while Amber steered him calmly through the mazes of the waltz. Touch-the-button-Nell was talking to a tall fair-moustached man whom I recognised as a black-jack booster. Suddenly she left him and came over to us. She went up to the Youth.

She had discarded her blond wig, and her pretty brown hair parted in the middle and rippled behind her ears. Her large violet-blue eyes had a devouring look that would stir the pulse of a saint. She accosted the Youth with a smile of particular witchery.

"Say, kid, won't you come and have a two-step with me? I've been looking at you for the last half-hour and wishing you'd ask me."

The Youth had advised me: "If any of them asks you, tell them to go to the devil;" but now he looked at her and his boyish face flushed.

"Nothing doing," he said stoutly.

"Oh, come now," she pleaded; "honest to goodness, kid, I've turned down the other fellow for you. You won't refuse me, will you? Come on; just one, sweetheart."

She was holding the lapels of his coat and dragging him gently forward. I could see him biting his lip in embarrassment.

"No, thanks, I'm sorry," he stammered. "I don't know how to dance. Besides, I've got no money."

She grew more coaxing.

"Never mind about the coin, honey. Come on, have one on me. Don't turn me down, I've taken such a notion to you. Come on now; just one turn."

I watched his face. His eyes clouded with emotion, and I knew the psychology of it. He was thinking: