abroad that Siwash George had
found two-dollars-fifty to the pan at the creek which he had named
"Bonanza"; how drunken men were thrown into open boats, and men who
refused to credit the report were bound hand and foot with ropes by
their friends and compelled to go along, lest they should lose the
chance of a lifetime; and how, where to-day Forty-Mile had been a
noisy town, to-morrow it was silent and deserted, with none left save
a few old men and sickly women to tell the story.

To all of this Beorn listened with small attention, for he kept
muttering to himself, "But how did he know that there was gold there?
How did he discover it?" Granger wondered to whom he was referring--to
his own son, to Siwash George, or to someone else; but he dared not
ask him a leading question lest his suspicion should be aroused. He
went on with his narration feverishly, forgetting in his excitement
his resolution to keep sober, emptying the tumbler of whisky
recklessly, turn and turn about with his companion, waiting and
watching to see whether, in the Indian phrase, the dead soul would
return. When he commenced to speak of himself, of his passage from
Skaguay to Dawson, of the wealth which he found and lost at Drunkman's
Shallows, and of his flight, Beorn became interested; his eyes blazed
and every few seconds he would give him encouragement, ejaculating
hoarsely, "Go on. Go on."

So he carried his history to an end with a rush, for now he knew that
the dead soul had come back. He finished with the sentence, "And then
I went to Wrath, for I was nearly starving. 'For God's sake, man, give
me some employment,' I said. 'I can't steal; they'd put me in gaol for
that, and so I should disgrace my mother. And I can't cut throats for
bread, for then I should get hanged. But, if I have to endure this
agony much longer, I shall do both.' And his reply was to send me up
here, to this ice-cold hell of snow and silence, to mind his store and
watch the Last Chance River flowing on and on, until the day of my
death. God curse the reptile and his charity."

The Man with the Dead Soul turned his head aside and there was silence
for a moment. Then, bending down and having assured himself that
Eyelids was asleep. "I've known all that," he said; "but, unlike you,
I did more 'an intend--I killed my man. I guess you an' I are o' one
family now, so there's no harm in tellin'. I don't just remember who
you are, nor how we happen to be here this night; bu