d the array of bottles, the gambling games, the big stove, the
weigher at the gold-scales, the musicians, the men and women, the
Virgin, Celia, and Nellie, Dan MacDonald, Bettles, Billy Rawlins, Olaf
Henderson, Doc Watson,--all of them.

It was just as he had left it, and in all seeming it might well be the
very day he had left. The sixty days of incessant travel through the
white wilderness suddenly telescoped, and had no existence in time.
They were a moment, an incident. He had plunged out and into them
through the wall of silence, and back through the wall of silence he
had plunged, apparently the next instant, and into the roar and turmoil
of the Tivoli.

A glance down at the sled with its canvas mail-bags was necessary to
reassure him of the reality of those sixty days and the two thousand
miles over the ice. As in a dream, he shook the hands that were thrust
out to him. He felt a vast exaltation. Life was magnificent. He
loved it all. A great sense of humanness and comradeship swept over
him. These were all his, his own kind. It was immense, tremendous.
He felt melting in the heart of him, and he would have liked to shake
hands with them all at once, to gather them to his breast in one mighty
embrace.

He drew a deep breath and cried: "The winner pays, and I'm the winner,
ain't I? Surge up, you-all Malemutes and Siwashes, and name your
poison! There's your Dyea mail, straight from Salt Water, and no
hornswogglin about it! Cast the lashings adrift, you-all, and wade
into it!"

A dozen pairs of hands were at the sled-lashings, when the young Le
Barge Indian, bending at the same task, suddenly and limply
straightened up. In his eyes was a great surprise. He stared about
him wildly, for the thing he was undergoing was new to him.

He was profoundly struck by an unguessed limitation. He shook as with
a palsy, and he gave at the knees, slowly sinking down to fall suddenly
across the sled and to know the smashing blow of darkness across his
consciousness.

"Exhaustion," said Daylight. "Take him off and put him to bed, some of
you-all. He's sure a good Indian."

"Daylight's right," was Doc Watson's verdict, a moment later. "The
man's plumb tuckered out."

The mail was taken charge of, the dogs driven away to quarters and fed,
and Bettles struck up the paean of the sassafras root as they lined up
against the long bar to drink and talk and collect their debts.

A few minutes later, Daylight was