you say, Bob; but I don't understand what you
mean now."

"You don't? Well, then, I'll soon make you, my son. It's like this: I
feel just like a squirrel in a cage, galloping on over miles of wire and
never getting a bit farther, or like one of those chaps on the
old-fashioned treadmill, who were always going upstairs, but never got
to the top."

"Look here," said Dallas, springing up suddenly from his seat in the
rough shelter made with pine-boughs, where they had been now for some
days, while they tried the banks of a tiny creek, one of many which they
had followed to their sources in their daring quest. "This is no time
for idle talk; which is it to be? Shall we retreat at once, and try to
get back to the main river, where we may find help, and perhaps save our
lives, or go on?"

There was a dead silence, and then a gust of wind swept down the narrow
valley, laden with fine, dusty snow, evidently a forerunner of a wintry
storm.

"If we start back now," said Abel at last, "we are not sure of reaching
the settlement before the winter sets in."

"And if we do we've nothing left to live upon, my sons. You see, those
last supplies emptied the bag, and we've never settled down since. You
both said, `Let it be a man or a mouse.'"

"And you said `All right,'" cried Dallas angrily.

"So I did, my son; but I hoped we should turn out men instead of mice."

"Well," said Dallas bitterly, "we must not find fault with one another.
We did our best."

"That's true," said Tregelly. "Hear, hear. Go on. What were you going
to say?"

"That I have had it my own way for long enough, but now I'll give up to
you two. There's no gold worth getting here, so if you both say, `Let's
make a dash back for life before we are shut in by the winter that seems
to be coming on early,' I'm ready, and we'll make a brave fight for it."

"And if we say, `No! Let's go on and fight for the stuff to the last'--
what then?"

"We will not look back," cried Dallas, stepping outside, to stand
gazing, with a far-off look in his eyes, straight along the narrow
ravine running up into the savage-looking snow-covered mountains.

"Go on," said Abel, who seemed to catch his cousin's enthusiasm as he
stood there, gradually growing whitened by the fine drifting snow.

"Go on?" said Dallas, without turning his head; "well, let's go on. The
gold must be up yonder, where it crumbles or is ground out of the rocky
mountains, to be washed, in the