head,
while the dusk was closing in when he stood panting amidst the stumps
of smaller trees. The mark of the axe was on them, and somebody had
piled up a mound of rock and stones. Alton drew in a long breath and
shook off his burden.

"Jimmy's claim," he said. "It may mean--most anything--to me."

Then, though his pulses throbbed, and he could feel his blood tingling,
he fell to work systematically, groping about the excavation the dead
man had made where the snowslide had rent apart the forest and scored
out the rock for him. Here and there he smashed a fragment of it with
the back of the axe, or picked up a discoloured stone of unusual
gravity and compared it with the pieces he took out of a little bag,
until at last he stood up stiffly and flung his head back.

All round him the forest rose dim and sombre, flinging back the roar of
the rapid in long pulsations of sound, and its solitude was not
lessened by the presence of the wet and weary man standing so still
that his outline was scarcely perceptible against the trunks behind
him. Save for the light of triumph in his eyes there was nothing in
the whole scene to uplift the fancy. The man's garments were tattered,
the river had not washed the mire from him, and one of his boots was
gaping, but the discovery he had made was fraught with great
possibilities for that lonely valley, and changes in the destinies of
many other men. It had lain wrapped in stillness, a sanctuary for the
beasts of the forest, countless ages since the world was young, being
made ready slowly by frost and sun, and now man had come.

For five long minutes Alton looked into the future, and once more the
fragrance of English roses seemed to steal faintly through the resinous
odours of the firs. Then he shook himself, and glanced again dubiously
at the river.

"And now," he said half aloud, "I'll get supper. It's a pity about
that flour."

As those who have sojourned in the bush of that country know, one can
sup on reasty pork and green tea alone, when it is impossible to get
anything better, but there are more appetizing compounds, and when the
edge of his appetite had been blunted, Alton stopped with greasy
fingers in the frypan and a little smile upon his face.

"And Somasco's mine, and Carnaby--when I ask for it, with all that lies
beneath me here," he said, and sat very still a space, with eyes that
had lost their keenness fixed upon the bush. He did not see the big
balsam