the figure at
which we had agreed to quit the Yukon; I had one, Mordaunt ten, and
you had thirty-five thousand dollars--forty-six thousand in all.
Mordaunt and I talked to you about selling out and starting on our
greater quest, but you held us to the fifty-thousand limit, saying
that six months' postponement more or less would make no difference,
and that we had better have too much than too little capital in hand
before our start was made. We yielded to your judgment inasmuch as you
were the richest man, never suspecting that you were already
contemplating going back on your bargain to share and share alike with
us.

"But after the burning had commenced, and the winter had settled down
for good, and the days had grown short and gloomy, we noticed a change
in your manner--one of which you, perhaps, were not fully conscious.
Your conversation became masterful and abrupt; you made us feel that
we were your hired men, and were no longer partners in a future and
nobler enterprise. Gradually the certainty dawned upon us that you had
repudiated your compact, and did not include us in your plans. Gold
for its own sake I had never cared about as you had; I only valued it
for the power it had to forward me in the quest of which I had dreamed
since I was a child--the following in my father's footsteps and
discovering of the city of the Incas, and, perhaps, of my father
himself.

"When I had seen you growing rich whilst I remained a poor man, I had
felt no jealousy; for I trusted in the promise we had exchanged and
relied on your honesty in keeping your word. But, when I had perceived
your new intention, something went wrong inside my brain, so that I
began to construe all your former good as bad. I thought that from the
first you had never intended to keep your word, and had brought me
into the Klondike to get me out of the way, so that, possessed of the
secret information which I had given you, you might steal a march on
me, and set out for El Dorado by yourself. Whether that was your
purpose I do not know; but, for doubting you, you can scarcely blame
me. So, day by day, as I descended the shaft to the bed-rock, and
piled up billets of wood, and kindled them, throwing out the muck,
drifting with the streak, sending up nuggets to the surface, and dirt
which often averaged ten dollars to the pan, I said to myself, 'Every
shovelful you dig out, and every fire you light, and every billet you
stack, is helping Spurling to betray