uttered, 'Who are you?'

"And he answered me, 'Your baser self.'

"I looked for a way of escape, but he stood between me and the mouth
of the shaft; to get out I would have had to pass him. I tried to make
him speak with me again that I might draw him aside, and so might slip
past him and get above ground; but he refused to stir. Then I grew
fascinated, and went near him, and peered into his face. He was like
me, yet unlike; he was more evil--what I might become at my worst. He
was to me what you were, when you just now arrived, to the man whom I
loved in London, and who saved my life in Tagish Lake. Having studied
his body and his face I loathed him, and drew myself away to the
farthest hiding-place. There I crouched beside the gold streak for
ten hours until the last glow of fire had died out, and I was left in
darkness. Then, though I could not see him, I knew that he was there.

"At last Mordaunt came and called to me. I begged him to come down.
Thinking I was wounded, he lit a lantern and descended in haste. As he
approached, I looked to see where _myself_ had been standing; but,
though I had felt him there the moment before, directly Mordaunt came
he vanished. In my horror I told Mordaunt everything--and what do you
think the little fellow did? Instead of laughing at me, or fleeing
from me for his life because I was mad, he set down his lamp and,
throwing his arms about me, knelt down there on the bed-rock and
prayed. If it hadn't been for Mordaunt I should certainly have killed
you in the days which followed. Whenever I was alone or in your
company, that thing, which was my baser self, was there. He would
stand behind you, so that you could not see him, with his hand
upraised as if about to strike. He would beckon to me that I also
should get behind you, and when you spoke to me contemptuously or
harshly the evil of his face would reflect a like passion in me
against you. But whenever Mordaunt was present he vanished, and I had
rest from temptation; therefore I say that Mordaunt saved you.

"I kept on hoping that when spring came I would be able to leave, and
thus rid myself of my evil dread; but the longer I stayed the greater
grew my peril. At length the crisis came.

"You had been down river across the ice to Dawson on the spree and to
arrange for the carriage of your bullion to Seattle. It was night, and
I was just returning from the shaft, where I had been giving a last
look to the burning. I had a rifl