od by and viewed the spectacle with a mind undisturbed, with a
gentle philosophy inspired by an experience which he alone could
appreciate. It was a wonderful sight. The effort, the haste, the
almost insane intentness of these people seeking the yellow metal, the
discovery of which was the whole bounds of their horizon. He felt
that it was good to see them. Good that these untamed passions should
be allowed full sway. He felt that such as these were the advance
guard of all human enterprise. Theirs was the effort, theirs the
hardship, the risk; and after them would come the trained mind,
perhaps the less honest mind, the mind which must harness the result
of their haphazard efforts to the process of civilization's evolution.
He even fancied he saw something of the influence of this day's work
upon the future of that mountain world.

But there was regret too in his thought. It was regret at the
impossibility of these pioneers ever enjoying the full fruits of their
labors. They would enjoy them in their own way, at the moment, but
such enjoyment was not adequate reward for their daring, their
sacrifice, their hardihood. Well enough he knew that they were but the
toilers in a weed-grown vineyard, and that it would fall to the lot of
the skilled husbandman to be the man who reaped the harvest.

It was a picture that would remain long enough in his memory. The
flaying picks rising and falling amongst the looser debris, the
grinding scrape of the shovel, turning again and again the heavy red
gravel. The shouts of hoarse voices hailing each other in jubilant
tones, voices thrilling with a note of hope such as they had not known
for weeks. He saw the hard muscles of sunburnt arms standing out
rope-like with the terrific labor they were engaged in. And in the
background of it all he saw the grim spectacle of the blackened hill,
frowning down like some evil monster, watching the vermin life eating
into a sore it was powerless to protect.

It was wonderful, the transformation of these things. And yet it was
far less strange than his witness of the spectacle of the beaten,
hopeless men he had helped so long up in the camp. He was glad.

He was glad, too, that even Buck had been caught in the fever of the
moment. He saw him with the rest, with borrowed tools, working with a
vigor and enthusiasm quite unsurpassed by the most ardent of the
professional gold-seekers. Yet he knew how little the man was tainted
with the disease of th