Quick,
Beorn, tell me. Why did you go to the Forbidden River?"

The eyes did not open; but, as if the soul were answering him with a
last warning as it passed out of the door of the body, the lips
stirred, "Ay, man, it's terrible--the things men give for gold."

The face had become so ashy pale that Granger bent above it, painfully
listening for the intake of the breath, to assure himself that Beorn
was not dead. His clamour had aroused Eyelids; looking down towards
him, he saw that his eyes were wide and motionless, gazing towards
the window with an expression of drunken terror.

"What's the matter?" he asked sharply.

The half-breed did not reply, but crouched and pointed with his hand.

Granger, turning his head and following the direction indicated,
looked towards the triangle of uncovered window-pane, and there saw
the face of a man, gazing hungrily in upon him--yet, not upon him, but
upon the nugget which lay sparkling by Beorn's side upon the shelf. It
was a face that seemed dimly familiar, but thinner and more haggard.
At first it seemed to be his own face--the face of that _self_ from
which he had fled. Then he recognized, and knew that Spurling had
returned.

CHAPTER XIV

SPURLING MAKES A REQUEST

There had been a time when Granger had desired to kill Spurling, and,
though latterly he had not consciously wished that he were dead, yet
he resented his reappearance; his presence broke in as a
storm-influence on the stoical quiet which he had attained. This man
stood for so many things which had been sinful and passionate in the
past--things which it had cost him so much even to attempt to forget;
things which he had promised himself that he would forget for Peggy's
sake. And now, because he had chosen to return, it seemed necessary
that he should call to mind the entire tragedy by asking the question,
"When you shot that woman in the Klondike, did you know that she was
not a man? And was she clothed in a woman's dress?"

Even though he kept silence, any hour Spurling himself might reopen
the subject by inquiring after Strangeways, as to whether he had
pursued farther, as to how he had fared, as to where he was at
present. Granger was by no means certain that he did not already know
that the corporal was dead. He shrank from the discomfort of playing
the accuser again; he shrank still more from making the ugly
confession that he himself was likely to be suspected of having
committed a kindred c