he started as a dark form rose out of the shadow under her and a
hand clasped hers. Jim! and she lifted her face.

"Joan! Joan! I'm rich! rich!" he babbled, wildly.

"Ssssh!" whispered Joan, softly, in his ear. "Be careful. You're wild
to-night.... I saw you come in with the nugget. I heard you.... Oh, you
lucky Jim! I'll tell you what to do with it!"

"Darling! It's all yours. You'll marry me now?"

"Sir! Do you take me for a fortune-hunter? I marry you for your gold?
Never!"

"Joan!"

"I've promised," she said.

"I won't go away now. I'll work my claim," he began, excitedly. And he
went on so rapidly that Joan could not keep track of his words. He
was not so cautious as formerly. She remonstrated with him, all to
no purpose. Not only was he carried away by possession of gold
and assurance of more, but he had become masterful, obstinate, and
illogical. He was indeed hopeless to-night--the gold had gotten into his
blood. Joan grew afraid he would betray their secret and realized there
had come still greater need for a woman's wit. So she resorted to a
never-failing means of silencing him, of controlling him--her lips on
his.

15

For several nights these stolen interviews were apparently the safer
because of Joan's tender blinding of her lover. But it seemed that in
Jim's condition of mind this yielding of her lips and her whispers of
love had really been a mistake. Not only had she made the situation
perilously sweet for herself, but in Jim's case she had added the spark
to the powder. She realized her blunder when it was too late. And the
fact that she did not regret it very much, and seemed to have lost
herself in a defiant, reckless spell, warned her again that she, too,
was answering to the wildness of the time and place. Joan's intelligence
had broadened wonderfully in this period of her life, just as all
her feelings had quickened. If gold had developed and intensified and
liberated the worst passions of men, so the spirit of that atmosphere
had its baneful effect upon her. Joan deplored this, yet she had the
keenness to understand that it was nature fitting her to survive.

Back upon her fell that weight of suspense--what would happen next?
Here in Alder Creek there did not at present appear to be the same peril
which had menaced her before, but she would suffer through fatality to
Cleve or Kells. And these two slept at night under a shadow that held
death, and by day they walked on a thin cru