roughout the first winter. The pay-gravel, thawed
on bed-rock and hoisted to the surface, immediately froze again. Thus
his dumps, containing several millions of gold, were inaccessible. Not
until the returning sun thawed the dumps and melted the water to wash
them was he able to handle the gold they contained. And then he found
himself with a surplus of gold, deposited in the two newly organized
banks; and he was promptly besieged by men and groups of men to enlist
his capital in their enterprises.

But he elected to play his own game, and he entered combinations only
when they were generally defensive or offensive. Thus, though he had
paid the highest wages, he joined the Mine-owners' Association,
engineered the fight, and effectually curbed the growing
insubordination of the wage-earners. Times had changed. The old days
were gone forever. This was a new era, and Daylight, the wealthy
mine-owner, was loyal to his class affiliations. It was true, the
old-timers who worked for him, in order to be saved from the club of
the organized owners, were made foremen over the gang of chechaquos;
but this, with Daylight, was a matter of heart, not head. In his heart
he could not forget the old days, while with his head he played the
economic game according to the latest and most practical methods.

But outside of such group-combinations of exploiters, he refused to
bind himself to any man's game. He was playing a great lone hand, and
he needed all his money for his own backing. The newly founded
stock-exchange interested him keenly. He had never before seen such an
institution, but he was quick to see its virtues and to utilize it.
Most of all, it was gambling, and on many an occasion not necessary for
the advancement of his own schemes, he, as he called it, went the
stock-exchange a flutter, out of sheer wantonness and fun.

"It sure beats faro," was his comment one day, when, after keeping the
Dawson speculators in a fever for a week by alternate bulling and
bearing, he showed his hand and cleaned up what would have been a
fortune to any other man.

Other men, having made their strike, had headed south for the States,
taking a furlough from the grim Arctic battle. But, asked when he was
going Outside, Daylight always laughed and said when he had finished
playing his hand. He also added that a man was a fool to quit a game
just when a winning hand had been dealt him.

It was held by the thousands of hero-worsh