ft tenderness of a mother and crushed her with the fierce ardor of a
lover, she lost herself in the bliss of a woman's surrender, and forgot
all her terrifying doubts and fears. What were questions of breed or
birth or color now, when she knew he loved her? Mere vapors that
vanished with the first flutter of warm wings.

Nor did Meade Burrell recall his recent self-conquest or pause to
reason why he should not love this little wisp of the wilderness. The
barriers he had built went down in the sight and touch of his love and
disappeared; his hesitation and infirmity seemed childish now--yes,
more than that, cowardly. He realized all in a moment that he had been
supremely selfish, that his love was a covenant, a compact, which he
had entered into with her and had no right to dissolve without her
consent, and, strangely enough, now that he acknowledged the bond to
himself, it became very sweet and satisfying.

"Your lips cling so that I can't get free," sighed the girl, at last.

"You never shall," he whispered. But when she smiled up at him
piteously, her eyes swimming, and said, "I must," he wrenched himself
away and let her go.

As he went lightly towards the barracks through the far-stretching
shadows, for the moon was yellow now, Meade Burrell sighed gladly to
himself. Again his course ran clear and straight before him though
wholly at variance with the one he had decided upon so recently. But he
knew not that his vision was obscured and that the moon-madness was
upon him.

CHAPTER XI

WHERE THE PATH LED

By daylight next morning every man and most of the women among the new
arrivals had disappeared into the hills--the women in spite of the
by-laws of Lee's Creek, which discriminated against their sex. When a
stampede starts it does not end with the location of one stream-bed,
nor of two; every foot of valley ground for miles on every hand is
pre-empted, in the hope that more gold will be found; each creek forms
a new district, and its discoverers adopt laws to suit their whims. The
women, therefore, hastened to participate in the discovery of new
territory and in the shaping of its government, leaving but few of
either sex to guard the tents and piles of provisions standing by the
river-bank. In two days they began to return, and straggled in at
intervals for a week thereafter, for many had gone far.

And now began a new era for Flambeau--an era of industry such as the
frontier town had never known.