ad,
overwhelming riot. She was sick and fainting, and could only listen
to the ravishing sounds which proceeded from the cabin in a wonderful
rhythm.

"Hum, _fiddle,_" Canim vouchsafed.

But she did not hear him, for in the ecstasy she was experiencing,
it seemed at last that all things were coming clear. Now! now! she
thought. A sudden moisture swept into her eyes, and the tears trickled
down her cheeks. The mystery was unlocking, but the faintness was
overpowering her. If only she could hold herself long enough! If
only--but the landscape bent and crumpled up, and the hills swayed
back and forth across the sky as she sprang upright and screamed,
"_Daddy! Daddy!_" Then the sun reeled, and darkness smote her, and she
pitched forward limp and headlong among the rocks.

Canim looked to see if her neck had been broken by the heavy pack,
grunted his satisfaction, and threw water upon her from the creek. She
came to slowly, with choking sobs, and sat up.

"It is not good, the hot sun on the head," he ventured.

And she answered, "No, it is not good, and the pack bore upon me
hard."

"We shall camp early, so that you may sleep long and win strength," he
said gently. "And if we go now, we shall be the quicker to bed."

Li Wan said nothing, but tottered to her feet in obedience and stirred
up the dogs. She took the swing of his pace mechanically, and followed
him past the cabin, scarce daring to breathe. But no sounds issued
forth, though the door was open and smoke curling upward from the
sheet-iron stovepipe.

They came upon a man in the bend of the creek, white of skin and blue
of eye, and for a moment Li Wan saw the other man in the snow. But she
saw dimly, for she was weak and tired from what she had undergone.
Still, she looked at him curiously, and stopped with Canim to watch
him at his work. He was washing gravel in a large pan, with a
circular, tilting movement; and as they looked, giving a deft flirt,
he flashed up the yellow gold in a broad streak across the bottom of
the pan.

"Very rich, this creek," Canim told her, as they went on. "Sometime I
will find such a creek, and then I shall be a big man."

Cabins and men grew more plentiful, till they came to where the main
portion of the creek was spread out before them. It was the scene of a
vast devastation. Everywhere the earth was torn and rent as though by
a Titan's struggles. Where there were no upthrown mounds of gravel,
great holes and trenches yaw