se who still trudged
doggedly forward were too selfishly preoccupied with visions of gold,
and their own concerns, and fears lest the rivers and lakes should
close up, to render him aid. Not so Spurling; in those days he was
never too busy to lend an unfortunate a helping hand; besides, like
most brave men, the thing which he valued highest was courage, and he
was taken with the young chap's pluck. "I'm fairly broad," he had
said, "and before the river freezes there's plenty of time for all
three of us to get drowned. So look sharp, my girl, and hand your
bundles up." From the first day he had nicknamed Mordaunt "The Girl,"
because he was so surpassingly modest and had no beard to shave. So he
and Spurling had shouldered Mordaunt's burden, and had made him their
partner, and had carried him through to the gold-fields alive.

Where was Jervis now? he wondered; then his thoughts returned to the
panorama of that eventful journey. He remembered how in the mouth of
the Windy Arm on Tagish Lake, when the sail swung round and sent him
spinning overboard, he would most certainly have perished in those
chill waters had not Spurling jumped in and held him up till the boat
put back. It was Spurling's hand which had kept the boat steady in the
boiling rapids of the White Horse, when he and Mordaunt had lost their
nerve--yes, that same hand which was now plucking restlessly at the
untrimmed beard which fringed that crafty, sullen face. How incredible
it seemed that this body should contain the same man, and that the
change should have taken place in five years! He contrasted that
big-shouldered, song-singing fellow who had given them of his endless
store of courage when their own was spent, compelling them to go
through the mush ice at Five Fingers, and the drift ice at Fort
Selkirk, and had landed them safely at Dawson almost against their
will, the last boat through before the Klondike froze up, with this
secretive hang-dog individual who slunk through an unpeopled
wilderness, twisting his neck from side to side, as though he already
felt the halter there--like a Seven Dials assassin, fearful of arrest.
There he sat by the window, with eyes fixed uncannily on the west,
watching for the follower whom he could not see, but only felt.

He turned round uncomfortably, feeling that Granger's eyes were upon
him; then rose up abruptly, saying, "Ha, I was forgetting! My dogs
must be fed."

Granger watched him go out, and was glad of rel