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.