ep snow of an arctic
landscape--and when, after incredible hardships, he had reached the
Klondike, he had found himself almost as far from a gold claim as ever.
All the mines were monopolized.

For the next four years he had alternately worked for wages and
prospected for himself. One year he had "mushed" in the Copper River
Country and later in the Tanana. In these explorations he went alone,
and once he sledged far within the Arctic circle with only two dogs to
keep him company. He became one of the most daring and persistent
prospectors and yet he had always been just a little too late. He had
never shared in any of the big strikes.

At last, after five years of this disheartening life, he had succeeded
in breaking away from the fatal lure of the North. Returning to
Anacortes on Puget Sound, he had taken up the threads of his life at the
point where he had dropped them, to meet me, at Ashcroft, in '98, and on
my little daughter's wrist was a bracelet, a string of nuggets, which
represented all that he had been able to win from the desolate North.

He left his youth in Alaska. He was an old and broken man when he landed
in Seattle, a silent, gray and introspective philosopher. Seeking out
the cabin he had built on the Skagit River, he resumed his residence
there, solitary and somber. In winter he cooked for a nearby lumber
camp, in summer he served as watchman for an electric power company,
patient, faithful, brooding over his books, austere, taciturn, mystical.

He read much on occult subjects, and corresponded ceaselessly with a
certain school of esoteric philosophy, reaching at last a lofty
serenity which approached content. He wrote me that the men of the
lumber camp spoke of him as a "queer old cuss," but that disturbed him
not at all. To me, however, he uttered his mind freely, and as I
followed him thus, in imagination, remembering him as he once was, my
graceful companion on the bright Iowa prairie, my sense of something
futile in his whole life was deepened into pain.

His letters contained no complaint. He dwelt mainly upon his trips into
the forest (occasional vacations from repulsive labor), but I was able
to infer from a word here and there, his detestation of the coarse jests
and senseless arguments of his "Siwash" companions. His philosophy
prevented repining; but he could not entirely conceal his moods of
loneliness, of defeat.

My heart ached as I thought of him, wearing his life away in the
so