he
had followed the gold strikes and the rumors of gold strikes from
Sonora, in Old Mexico, to the Siberian coast, on Behring Sea, in search
of a new Klondike. He had lived hard, endured much in the adventurous
life of which he seldom talked. His few intimates had been men like
himself--the miners and prospectors who built their cabins in the
fastnesses with Hope their one companion, to eat and sleep and work
with. He was self-educated and well informed along such lines as his
tastes led him. He read voraciously all that pertained to Nature, to her
rocks and minerals, and he knew the habits of wild animals as he knew
his own. Of the people and that vague place they called "the outside,"
he knew little or nothing.

He had acquaintances and he had enemies in the mining camps which
necessity compelled him to visit at long intervals for the purchase of
supplies. Agreeable and ingratiating storekeepers who sold him
groceries, picks, shovels, powder, drills, at fifty per cent. profit,
neat, smooth-shaven gamblers, bartenders, who welcomed him with
boisterous camaraderie, tired and respectable women who "run" boarding
houses, painted, highly-perfumed ladies of the dance hall, enigmatic
Chinamen, all were types with which he was familiar. But he called none
of them "friend." Their tastes, their interests, their standards of
conduct were different from his own. They had nothing in common, yet he
could not have explained exactly why. He told himself vaguely that he
did not "cotton" to them, and thought the fault was with himself.

Bruce was twenty-seven, and his mother was still his ideal of womanhood.
He doubted if there were another like her in all the world. Certainly he
never had seen one who in the least approached her. He remembered her
vividly, the grave, gray, comprehending eyes, the long braids of hair
which lay like thick new hempen rope upon the white counterpane.

His lack of a substantial education--a college education--was a sore
spot with him which did not become less sore with time. If she had lived
he was sure it would have been different. With his mother to intercede
for him he knew that he would have had it. After her death his father
grew more taciturn, more impatient, more bent on preparing him to follow
in his footsteps, regardless of his inclinations. The "lickings" became
more frequent, for he seemed only to see his mistakes and childish
faults.

The culmination had come when he had asked to be allowed