hat whirled it about the pines, and, until it froze up,
we lived a good deal on salmon from the river. They were dead when we
got them, and some of them rotten."

Miss Deringham shivered. "And when the river froze?" she said.

"Then," said Alton gravely, "there were days when we lived on nothing,
and worked until we couldn't hold the pick to keep from thinking.
Still, we got a deer now and then, and we had a very little flour. It
was mouldy when we bought it, but we hadn't dollars enough for anything
better. Mrs. Jimmy got sick and thin, but she never grumbled, and was
always waiting bright and smiling when we crawled back into the shanty.
Anyway, we found no silver that would pay for the getting, though we
knew it was there."

"How did you know that?" said Miss Deringham.

"Well," said Alton, "a Siwash told us something. He crawled in
starving one day, and though we hadn't much over we fed him. For
another thing we felt it in us that we were on the right trail."

"That," said the girl, "does not sound possible."

Alton nodded. "No," he said. "Still, one gets taught up there in the
bush that there's more in a man than what some folks think of as his
reason. Well, we made a tough fight, and were beaten."

Miss Deringham glanced at him covertly, and noticing his quiet, bronzed
face, steady eyes, and big brown hands, felt that the struggle had been
very grim and stubborn. "So you gave it up?" she said.

"Yes," said Alton, "for a time, and I had my hands full with other
things when Jimmy went back again. He had piled up a few dollars and
left the woman behind him. He took the trail with a good outfit and a
pack-horse, but he didn't come down again, and when Mrs. Jimmy got
anxious I went up to look for him. It was a good while before I found
him sitting under a pine, and he had found the silver, though it wasn't
much use to him."

"Was it a rich vein?" said the girl.

"Yes," said Alton solemnly, "I think it was, from the specimens he had
brought along, but, and it's difficult sometimes to see why things
should happen that way, he couldn't tell me where it was. Jimmy was
dead, you see."

The girl shivered visibly. "It must have been horrible."

"No," said Alton gravely. "He was sitting there very quiet in the snow
with his hand frozen on the rifle, and there was a big dead panther not
far away; but I was more sorry for Mrs. Jimmy than I was for him.
Jimmy hadn't always been a trail-chopper, and o