haft; if you entered the small door upon your left hand you found
yourself in the interior of the living cabin.

The gulch ran east and west, and at sunset at some times in the year a
red light from the dying sun would fall into it, like a tongue of flame,
and the whole gulch would seem on fire. At such moments Talbot would
cease his work and stand looking up the gorge, with the red light
falling on his face and banishing its careworn pallor. No one knew what
he was thinking of in those moments, whether he was recalling Italian
or Egyptian skies that had been as fair, or whether for a moment some
vanished face seemed to look at him from out those brilliant hues, or if
merely the great sheets of gold that spread above the gulch brought
visions of that wealth he was giving his best years to attain. No one
who met him knew much about him, except that he was an Englishman, had
travelled much and experienced many different forms of life, and finally
come to the Klondike,--but why this last? He was believed to have been
rich before he came: was it merely to increase his wealth, or was there
some other reason? Was there any one awaiting his return? There were
several portraits in his cabin of soft and lovely faces, but then the
number was confusing, and the most curious of the men who worked under
him could not come to any satisfying conclusion. All they knew was that
he worked harder than any common miner, that his reserve was unbroken,
and his life one continual self-denial. There were thirty men in all who
worked for him, and by them all he was respected and feared rather than
liked. There was a chilling reserve wrapped about him, an utter absence
of ingenuousness and frankness of character, that prevented any
affection growing up amongst the men for their master, and his attitude
towards them was summed up in the answer he gave to an acquaintance who
once asked him how he got on with his men, if he had any friends amongst
them. Talbot had raised his dark, marked eyebrows and merely said
coldly, "I don't make friends of miners."

Stephen Wood's cabin was a little higher up the gulch by several yards,
and the claims of the two men had been staked out side by side. A great
friendship had grown up between the two, such a friendship as common
danger, common privations, common aims, and Nature's awful loneliness
drives any two human beings in each other's proximity into. But besides
this friendship there was a quiet liking on Ta