been crucified a-plenty," Uncle Bill replied, with a significant look
at Ore City sitting with its mouth agape, "but," modestly, "I wouldn't
hardly like to go as far as to call myself _that_."

XXVIII

"ANNIE'S BOY"

When Bruce was left alone in the gloomy canyon, where the winter sun at
its best did not shine more than three hours in the twenty-four, he had
wondered whether the days or nights would be the hardest to endure. It
was now well into December, and still he did not know. They were equally
intolerable.

During the storms which kept him inside he spent the days looking at the
floor, the nights staring at the ceiling, springing sometimes to his
feet burning with feverish energy, a maddening desire to _do_
something--and there was nothing for him to do but wait. Moments would
come when he felt that he could go out and conquer the world bare-handed
but they quickly passed with a fresh realization of his helplessness,
and he settled back to the inevitable.

It was folly to go out penniless--unarmed; he had learned that lesson in
the East and his condition then had been affluence compared to this. He
was doing the one thing that it was possible for him to do in the
circumstances--to get money enough to go outside.

"Slim" had brought a collection of traps down the river from Meadows,
and Bruce had set these out. So far he had been rather lucky and the
pile of skins in the corner was growing--lynx, cougar, marten, mink--but
it still was not high enough.

If Bruce had been less sensitive, more world-hardened, his failure would
not have seemed such a crushing, unbearable thing, but alone in the
killing monotony he brooded over the money he had sunk for other people
until it seemed like a colossal disgrace for which there was no excuse
and that he could never live down. In his bitter condemnation of himself
for his inexperience, his ill-judged magnanimity, he felt as though his
was an isolated case--that no human being ever had made such mistakes
before.

But it was thoughts of Helen that always gave his misery its crowning
touch. She pitied him, no doubt, because, she was kind, but in her heart
he felt she must despise him for a weakling--a braggart who could not
make good his boasts. She needed him, too,--he was sure of it--and lack
of money made him as helpless to aid her as though he were serving a
jail sentence. When, in the night, his mind began running along this
line he could no longer stay in