modities of life were almost beyond the dreams
of avarice. It was a tune in which the worst of men's natures stalked
forth, hydra-headed and deaf, roaring for gold, spitting fire, and
shedding blood. It was a time when gold and fire and blood were one. It
was a tune when a horde of men from every class and nation, of all ages
and characters, met on a field were motives and ambitions and faiths and
traits merged into one mad instinct of gain. It was worse than the
time of the medieval crimes of religion; it made war seem a brave and
honorable thing; it robbed manhood of that splendid and noble trait,
always seen in shipwrecked men or those hopelessly lost in the barren
north, the divine will not to retrograde to the savage. It was a time,
for all it enriched the world with yellow treasure, when might was
right, when men were hopeless, when death stalked rampant. The sun rose
gold and it set red. It was the hour of Gold!

One afternoon late, while Joan was half dreaming, half dozing the hours
away, she was thoroughly aroused by the tramp of boots and loud voices
of excited men. Joan slipped to the peephole in the partition. Bate Wood
had raised a warning hand to Kells, who stood up, facing the door. Red
Pearce came bursting in, wild-eyed and violent. Joan imagined he was
about to cry out that Kells had been betrayed.

"Kells, have you--heard?" he panted.

"Not so loud, you--!" replied Kells, coolly. "My name's Blight.... Who's
with you?"

"Only Jesse an' some of the gang. I couldn't steer them away. But
there's nothin' to fear."

"What's happened? What haven't I heard?"

"The camp's gone plumb ravin' crazy.... Jim Cleve found the biggest
nugget ever dug in Idaho!... THIRTY POUNDS!"

Kells seemed suddenly to inflame, to blaze with white passion. "Good for
Jim!" he yelled, ringingly. He could scarcely have been more elated if
he had made the strike himself.

Jesse Smith came stamping in, with a crowd elbowing their way behind
him. Joan had a start of the old panic at sight of Gulden. For once the
giant was not slow nor indifferent. His big eyes glared. He brought
back to Joan the sickening sense of the brute strength of his massive
presence. Some of his cronies were with him. For the rest, there
were Blicky and Handy Oliver and Chick Williams. The whole group bore
resemblance to a pack of wolves about to leap upon its prey. Yet,
in each man, excepting Gulden, there was that striking aspect of
exultation.

"Where