Peel River Indians, and found they knew of
a ledge of high-grade, free-milling quartz somewhere out there in the
Land Back of Beyond. He had a sample of it, and you could just see the
gold shining all through it. It was great stuff. Jack Locasto's the last
man to turn down a chance like that. He's the worst gambler in the
Northland, and no amount of wealth will ever satisfy him. So he's off
with an Indian and one companion, that little Irish satellite of his,
Pat Doogan. They have six months' grub. They'll be away all winter."

"What's become of that girl of his?" asked Hewson, "the last one he's
been living with? You remember she came in on the boat with us. Poor
little kid! Blast that man anyway. He's not content with women of his
own kind, he's got to get his clutches on the best of them. That was a
good little girl before he got after her. If she was a friend of mine
I'd put a bullet in his ugly heart."

Hewson growled like a wrathful bear, but Mervin smiled his cynical
smile.

"Oh, you mean the Madonna," he said; "why, she's gone on the
dance-halls."

They continued to talk of other things, but I did not hear them any
more. I was in a trance, and I only aroused when they rose to go.

"Better say good-bye to the kid here," said the Prodigal; "he's going to
the old country to-morrow."

"No, I'm not," I answered sullenly; "I'm just going as far as Dawson."

He stared and expostulated, but my mind was made up. I would fight,
fight to the last.

CHAPTER II

Berna on the dance-halls--words cannot convey all that this simple
phrase meant to me. For two months I had been living in a dull apathy of
pain, but this news galvanised me into immediate action.

For although there were many degrees of dance-hall depravity, at the
best it meant a brand of ineffaceable shame. She had lived with Locasto,
had been recognised as his mistress--that was bad enough; but the
other--to be at the mercy of all, to be classed with the harpies that
preyed on the Man with the Poke, the vampires of the gold-camp.
Berna-- Oh, it was unspeakable! The thought maddened me. The
needle-point of suffering that for weeks had been boring into my brain
seemed to have pierced its core at last.

When the Prodigal expostulated with me I laughed--a bitter, mirthless
laugh.

"I'm going to Dawson," I said, "and if it was hell itself, I'd go there
for that girl. I don't care what any one thinks. Home, society, honour
itself, let them all g