that I might see in what manner he treated her. I went
from room to room, and in such way thought kings and queens must live,
it was all so very good. And they all said he treated her like a queen,
and many marveled as to what breed of woman she was for there was other
blood in her veins, and she was different from the women of Akatan, and
no one knew her for what she was. Aye, she was a queen; but I was a
chief, and the son of a chief, and I had paid for her an untold price
of skin and boat and bead.

'But why so many words? I was a sailorman, and knew the way of the
ships on the seas. I followed to England, and then to other countries.
Sometimes I heard of them by word of mouth, sometimes I read of them in
the papers; yet never once could I come by them, for they had much
money, and traveled fast, while I was a poor man. Then came trouble
upon them, and their wealth slipped away one day like a curl of smoke.
The papers were full of it at the time; but after that nothing was
said, and I knew they had gone back where more gold could be got from
the ground.

'They had dropped out of the world, being now poor, and so I wandered
from camp to camp, even north to the Kootenay country, where I picked
up the cold scent. They had come and gone, some said this way, and some
that, and still others that they had gone to the country of the Yukon.
And I went this way, and I went that, ever journeying from place to
place, till it seemed I must grow weary of the world which was so
large. But in the Kootenay I traveled a bad trail, and a long trail,
with a breed of the Northwest, who saw fit to die when the famine
pinched. He had been to the Yukon by an unknown way over the mountains,
and when he knew his time was near gave me the map and the secret of a
place where he swore by his gods there was much gold.

'After that all the world began to flock into the north. I was a poor
man; I sold myself to be a driver of dogs. The rest you know. I met him
and her in Dawson.

'She did not know me, for I was only a stripling, and her life had been
large, so she had no time to remember the one who had paid for her an
untold price.

'So? You bought me from my term of service. I went back to bring things
about in my own way, for I had waited long, and now that I had my hand
upon him was in no hurry.

'As I say, I had it in mind to do my own way, for I read back in my
life, through all I had seen and suffered, and remembered the cold and
hu