they used to do, and how she would sing
for him beside their campfire at night. 'She had a voice sweet as an
angel,' I remember he told me once. Then, more than forty years ago, came
the gold-rush away up in the Stikine River country. They went. They joined
a little party of twelve--ten men and two women. This party wandered far
out of the beaten paths of the other gold-seekers. And at last they found
gold."

Ahead of them Donald MacDonald had turned in his saddle and was looking
back. For a moment Aldous ceased speaking.

"Please--go on!" said Joanne.

"They found gold," repeated Aldous. "They found so much of it, Ladygray,
that some of them went mad--mad as beasts. It was placer gold--loose gold,
and MacDonald says that one day he and Jane filled their pockets with
nuggets. Then something happened. A great storm came; a storm that filled
the mountains with snow through which no living creature as heavy as a man
or a horse could make its way. It came a month earlier than they had
expected, and from the beginning they were doomed. Their supplies were
almost gone.

"I can't tell you the horrors of the weeks and months that followed, as old
Donald has told them to me, Joanne. You must imagine. Only, when you are
deep in the mountains, and the snow comes, you are like a rat in a trap. So
they were caught--eleven men and three women. They who could make their
beds in sheets of yellow gold, but who had no food. The horses were lost in
the storm. Two of their frozen carcasses were found and used for food. Two
of the men set out on snowshoes, leaving their gold behind, and probably
died.

"Then the first terrible thing happened. Two men quarrelled over a can of
beans, and one was killed. He was the husband of one of the women. The next
terrible thing happened to her--and there was a fight. On one side there
were young Donald and the husband of the other woman; on the other
side--the beasts. The husband was killed, and Donald and Jane sought refuge
in the log cabin they had built. That night they fled, taking what little
food they possessed, and what blankets they could carry. They knew they
were facing death. But they went together, hand in hand.

"At last Donald found a great cave in the side of a mountain. I have a
picture of that cave in my brain--a deep, warm cave, with a floor of soft
white sand, a cave into which the two exhausted fugitives stumbled, still
hand in hand, and which was home. But they found it a littl