tarted a rush for the train.

As the last coach disappeared round the turn the essential bleak
loneliness of the place returned. The station seemed deserted by every
human being, even the operator was lost to sight, and the gambler,
utterly solitary, with clouded brain and laboring breath, turned towards
the height, his left leg dragging like a shackle.

For the first half-mile the way was easy, and by moving slowly he
suffered less pain than he had expected. Around him the frost-smitten
aspens were shivering in the wind, their sparse leaves dangling like
coins of red-and-yellow gold, and all the billowing land below, to the
west, was iridescent with green and flame-color and crimson. A voiceless
regret, a dim, wide-reaching, wistful sadness came over him, but did not
shake his resolution. He had but to look down at his crippled body to
know that the beauty of the world was no longer his to enjoy. His days
were now but days of pain.

He had always loved the heights. From the time he had first sighted this
range he had never failed to experience a peculiar exaltation as he
mounted above the ranch and the mine. Gambler and night-owl though he
had been, he had often spent his afternoons on horseback riding high
above the camps, and now some small part of his love of the upper air
came back to lead him towards his grave. With face turned to the
solitudes of the snows, with ever-faltering steps, he commenced his
challenging march towards death.

At the first sharp up-raise in the way his heart began to pound and he
swayed blindly to and fro, unable to proceed. For an instant he looked
down in dismay at the rocky, waiting earth, a most inhospitable grave. A
few minutes' rest against a tree, and his brain cleared. "Higher--I must
go higher," he said to himself; "they'll find me here."

As he rose he could see the town spread wide on the hill-tops beneath
him--the cabins mere cubes, the mill a child's toy. He could discern men
like ants moving to and fro as if in some special excitement--but he did
not concern himself with the cause. His one thought was to mount--to
blend with the firs and the rocks. He drew the phial from his pocket and
held it in his hand in readiness, with a dull fear that the chemical
would prove too small, too weak, to end his pain.

It was utterly silent and appallingly lonely on this side of the great
peak. Hunters were few and prospectors were seldom seen. These
upward-looping trails led to no min