o a certainty where the place must be. Will
you come, boy--will you come?"

Felix got up and went to the tiny square window to look out. His voice
was thick with excitement, but he did not answer directly.

"The storm has passed," he said, "and I must go back to my tent. I--I
will think about what you say and tell you in the morning."

He went out into the dark, wet night, closing the door with a hand
that shook and fumbled against the wooden latch.

The old miner must have slept little, for it was scarcely dawn before
he had crossed the muddy slope to Felix's tent. Early as he was, the
boy was before him, gathering up his possessions and thrusting them
into his pack.

"You're going?" cried the man joyfully, but Felix shook his head.

"I'm going back," he said and beyond that he would tell him nothing.

He could not explain how, in the watches of the night, there had come
to him the realization that the fever for finding gold is more
consuming than the fever for getting it, that there is always the
thirst to go on, to leave what one has and seek some new, dazzling
discovery that seems just out of reach. To follow adventure is one
thing; but, as the years pass, to surrender a whole life to a single
and selfish desire is quite another. Some indwelling wisdom had told
Felix that it was time to turn back, but he had no words by which to
make the other understand. The old miner had given up to the dream
long ago; he would always be seeking something richer and better,
always leaving it for some golden vision that would lure him forward
until at last he would disappear in the mountains or the desert and
never return.

"I am going to turn over my claim here to Abner Blythe," declared
Felix. "It will make him rich and his wife happy, and you had better
stay to work it with him, for I am going home."

"I can't stay." The miner seemed to understand also, but he was as
brief and inarticulate as was the boy. "I'm one of those that has to
go on--and on."

He turned away and walked back to his cabin through the rain-drenched
flowers and the dripping green bushes. Who may know what pictures
either of dark regret or of golden hope were passing before his eyes
as vividly as were Felix's memories of the low cottage on the hill, of
the apple trees that would be in bloom now all up and down Medford
Valley, of the wind talking in the oak tree outside his window. A
quarrel with one's only brother looks suddenly very small when so