at a ghost.

"Great God," he cried. "It's Harold Lounsbury!"

But instantly he knew it could not be Harold Lounsbury. The picture was
fully twenty-five years old and the face was that of a mature man,
probably aged thirty. Harold Lounsbury himself was only thirty. And
now, looking closer, he saw that the features were not quite the same.
There was more breeding, more sensitiveness in Harold's face. And there
was also, dim and haunting, some slight resemblance to Kenly Lounsbury,
whom he had brought up into Clearwater and who had gone back with
Vosper.

Yet already his inner consciousness was screaming in his ear the
identity of this man. Already he knew. It was no other than Rutheford,
the man who later, in the cavern darkness, had struck his father down.

His deductions followed with deadly and remorseless certainty. He knew
now why Harold Lounsbury had come into Clearwater. Virginia had told
Bill that her lover seemed to have some definite place in view for his
prospecting: he had simply come to search for the same lost mine that
Bill had discovered the previous day. He knew now why Kenly Lounsbury
had been willing to finance Virginia's trip into the North,--not in
hopes of finding his lost nephew, but to find the mine of which he also
had some knowledge and thus repair the broken remnants of his fortune.
In the same sweep of realization he knew why Harold Lounsbury's face had
always haunted him and filled him with hazy, uncertain memories. He had
never seen Harold before; but he had seen this photograph in his own
boyhood, and Harold's face had so resembled the one in the picture that
it had haunted and disturbed him.

Only too well he knew the truth. Harold Lounsbury was Rutheford's
son,--the son of his father's murderer. Kenly Lounsbury was Rutheford's
brother. Both had come to Clearwater to repair their broken fortunes
from the mine of which they both had knowledge. Whether it was guilty
knowledge or not no man could tell.

Such directions as Rutheford had given his son had been unavailing
because of the snowslide that had changed the contour of the little
valley where the mine lay. He understood now Harold's disappointment
and emotion when Bill had discovered the mine. Likely his own name was
Harold Rutheford, or else Rutheford's true name had been Lounsbury.
Bill stood shivering all over with rage and hate.

Now he knew the road of vengeance! He had only to trace Harold
Lounsbury back