round, as if he could feel that my
eyes were watching him; he threw up his head like an old bull caribou
scenting danger.

"I had left two trails leading from that point, the one towards his
hut and back again, the other into the bush to where my dogs were
tethered. If he was determined to follow up the latter and to trace me
to my hiding, I was ready for him, and would have the advantage of
knowing his whereabouts, whilst he was ignorant of mine. He must have
been going through some such argument himself, for presently he
whipped up his dogs and, with one last glance across his shoulder,
continued on his journey. When he had vanished, and I had made certain
that he did not intend to return, I went forward to inspect his
abandoned camp.

"Inside the hut I found that the floor was of earth and below the
snow-level, making evident the fact that it had been erected before
the winter had commenced. When I examined the walls, which were
constructed of boughs and mud, I came to the conclusion that they had
been standing for many years, but had been renewed from time to time.
All this made it clear to me that you had been mistaken in saying that
the Forbidden River had never been travelled. The next thing to
discover was what had brought the old man up there. The earth of the
floor was not packed together, but looked loose and rough, as though
it had been newly dug. This gave me my first clue to the secret. When
I walked above it, it did not sound solid, so I commenced to scrape
away the earth. Six inches down I came to branches of trees spread
crosswise, as though to form a roof to a cellar. Pulling these aside,
after another hour of labour, I looked down into a pit which had been
hollowed out. It was getting dark now, so I lit a fire.

"I climbed into the pit, by some rudely fashioned stairs which had
been shaped in the side of the wall, and soon found myself on level
footing. Groping about down there, I could feel that the sides were
tunnelled, and had been roughly timbered with the stems of trees.
Going above ground, I fetched a torch and then saw all that I had
commenced to suspect--and a good deal more.

"Piled up in one corner was an outfit of miner's implements, pans,
axes, spades, picks, etc., and close beside them was a sack of
moose-hide. Whipping out my knife, I cut through the thongs by which
the sack was tied; it lurched over, letting fall a dozen ounces or so
of gold dust. On searching round, I found in an