ve out my life far from the scenes
of so much unhappiness. My wound disqualified me from further army
service and gave me a great deal of trouble, even after I was dismissed
from the hospital.

"Nevertheless, I worked my way to the far West, partly on foot and
partly in the slow stage-coaches of that period. Once in California, I
became deeply interested in the gold mines, where I was certain, like
many another deluded one, that I was shortly going to amass an enormous
fortune! But, after several years of fruitless search and fruitless
toil, I stood as poor as the day I had first come into the region. In
the meantime, the fascination of the life had taken hold of me, and I
could relinquish it for no other. I had always, from a small child, been
passionately fond of adventure and yearned to see other regions and test
my fortune in new and untried ways. I could have done so no more
acceptably than in the very course I was now pursuing.

"At the end of those hard but interesting years in California, rumors
drifted to me of golden possibilities in upper Canada, and I decided to
try my luck in the new field. The region was, at that time, practically
a trackless wilderness, and to brave it at all was considered the limit
of folly. That, however, far from deterring me, attracted me only the
more. I got together an outfit, and bade a long farewell to even the
rough civilization of California.

"Those were strange years, marvelous years, that I spent in the mountain
fastnesses of upper Canada. For month on month I would see no human
being save the half-breed Indian guide who accompanied me, and most of
the time _he_ seemed to me scarcely human. And all the while the search
for gold went on, endlessly--endlessly. And the way led me farther and
farther from the haunts of men. Then,--one day,--I found it! Found it in
a mass, near the surface, and in such quantities that I actually had
little else to do but shovel it out, wash it, and lay the precious
nuggets aside, till at length the vein was exhausted. On weighing it up,
I found such a quantity that there was really no object in pursuing the
search any farther. I had enough. I was wealthy and to spare, and the
longing came upon me to return to my own kind again. By this time,
fifteen years had passed.

"You must not, however, think that in all these years and these
absorbing interests, I had forgotten my mother. On the contrary,
especially when I was in the wilderness, she was