ause he added, remorseless:

"I helped to bury some of them."

"Your experience was unusual, or why do men come back year after year?"

"Did you ever hear of a thing called Hope?"

They moved uneasily on their stools, and some rubbed stubbly chins with
perplexed, uncertain fingers, and they all glowered at the speaker. He
was uncomfortable, this fellow.

"Well, there mayn't be as much gold up here as men think, but there's
more hope than anywhere on earth."

"To hell with hope; give me certainty," says Salmon P.

"Exactly. So you shuffle the cards, and laugh down the five-cent limit.
You'll play one last big game, and it'll be for life this time as well
as fortune."

"Cheerful cuss, ain't he?" whispered Schiff.

"They say we're a nation of gamblers. Well, sir, the biggest game we
play is the game that goes on near the Arctic Circle."

"What's the matter with Wall Street?"

"'Tisn't such a pretty game, and they don't play for their lives. I
tell you it's love of gambling brings men here, and it's the splendid
stiff game they find going on that keeps them. There's nothing like it
on earth."

His belated enthusiasm deceived nobody.

"It don't seem to have excited you much," said Mac.

"Oh, I've had my turn at it. And just by luck I found I could play
another--a safer game, and not bad fun either." He sat up straight and
shot his hands down deep in the pockets of his mackinaws. "I've got a
good thing, and I'm willing to stay with it."

The company looked at him coldly.

"Well," drawled Potts, "you can look after the fur trade; give me a
modest little claim in the Klondyke."

"Oh, Klondyke! Klondyke!" Benham got up and stepped over Kaviak on his
way to the fire. He lit a short briarwood with a flaming stick and
turned about. "Shall I tell you fellows a little secret about the
Klondyke?" He held up the burning brand in the dim room with telling
emphasis. The smoke and flame blew black and orange across his face as
he said:

"_Every dollar that's taken out of the Klondyke in gold-dust will cost
three dollars in coin_."

A sense of distinct dislike to Benham had spread through the company--a
fellow who called American enterprise love of gambling, for whom
heroism was foolhardy, and hope insane. Where was a pioneer so bold he
could get up now and toast the Klondyke? Who, now, without grim
misgiving, could forecast a rosy future for each man at the board? And
that, in brief, had been the programme.

"Oh