. The gold had represented
the season's washings--an amount that went into the hundreds of
thousands--and Rutheford had murdered his benefactor and absconded with
the entire amount. No living human being except Rutheford himself knew
where the mine lay; there was no way for Bronson's family either to
reclaim the body or to continue to work on the mine. Search parties had
sought it in vain, and the lost mine of the Bronsons became a legend, a
mystery that had grown constantly more dim in the passing years.

"When I am gone," little Bill would whisper to his mother, as she knelt
crying at his feet, "I will go out and find my papa's mine. Also I will
chase down Rutheford, and track him all over the world until I find him,
and make him suffer for all he has done!"

This was a northern child, and his baby eyes would gleam and his
features draw, and then his mother, half-frightened, would try to quiet
him in her arms. This was the North, the land of primitive emotions,
take and give, receive and pay, simple justice and remorseless
vengeance; and when the storm swept over the cabin and the snow deepened
at the doorway, those terrible, whispered promises seemed wholly fitting
and true.

"I'll follow him till I die, and he and his wife and his son will pay
for what he has done to us."

But the years had come and passed, and Rutheford had not been brought to
justice nor the mine found. It was true that in a past summer Bill had
traced his father's murderer as far as the shipping point, but there all
trace of him was irremediably lost. Bill had made many excursions into
the Clearwater in search of the lost mine, all without success. He had
had but one guide,--a hastily scrawled map that Bronson had once drawn
for his wife, to show her the approximate position of the claim. There
had been no hope of avenging the murder, but with each recurring spring
Bill had felt certain of clearing up the mystery, at least of finding
the mine and its wealth and the bones of his father. But the last days
of his mother, gone at last to her old home in the United States, could
be made easier; but his own future would be assured. But now, at
thirty-two, the recovery of the mine seemed as far distant as ever.
Devoting his life to the pursuit of it, he had not prepared himself for
any other occupation; he had only a rather unusual general education,
procured from the Bradleyburg schools and his winter reading, and now he
was face to face