ht out before him into a dreary
future, through the grey vistas of which he saw himself riding on a sled
behind running dogs with lame Lashka by his side.

Then he spoke, quite simply, looking Mabel in the eyes.

"I am very sorry. I did not dream it. I thought you had married Corry.
That is Mrs. Pentfield sitting on the sled over there."

Mabel Holmes turned weakly toward her sister, as though all the fatigue
of her great journey had suddenly descended on her. Dora caught her
around the waist. Corry Hutchinson was still occupied with his
moccasins. Pentfield glanced quickly from face to face, then turned to
his sled.

"Can't stop here all day, with Pete's baby waiting," he said to Lashka.

The long whip-lash hissed out, the dogs sprang against the breast bands,
and the sled lurched and jerked ahead.

"Oh, I say, Corry," Pentfield called back, "you'd better occupy the old
cabin. It's not been used for some time. I've built a new one on the
hill."

TOO MUCH GOLD

This being a story--and a truer one than it may appear--of a mining
country, it is quite to be expected that it will be a hard-luck story.
But that depends on the point of view. Hard luck is a mild way of
terming it so far as Kink Mitchell and Hootchinoo Bill are concerned; and
that they have a decided opinion on the subject is a matter of common
knowledge in the Yukon country.

It was in the fall of 1896 that the two partners came down to the east
bank of the Yukon, and drew a Peterborough canoe from a moss-covered
cache. They were not particularly pleasant-looking objects. A summer's
prospecting, filled to repletion with hardship and rather empty of grub,
had left their clothes in tatters and themselves worn and cadaverous. A
nimbus of mosquitoes buzzed about each man's head. Their faces were
coated with blue clay. Each carried a lump of this damp clay, and,
whenever it dried and fell from their faces, more was daubed on in its
place. There was a querulous plaint in their voices, an irritability of
movement and gesture, that told of broken sleep and a losing struggle
with the little winged pests.

"Them skeeters'll be the death of me yet," Kink Mitchell whimpered, as
the canoe felt the current on her nose, and leaped out from the bank.

"Cheer up, cheer up. We're about done," Hootchinoo Bill answered, with
an attempted heartiness in his funereal tones that was ghastly. "We'll
be in Forty Mile in forty minutes, and then--curs