now, and with that little he bought his
third outfit, a poor, pathetic shadow of the former ones, but enough for
a desperate man.

Once more he packed it over the trail, now a perfect Avernus of horror.
He reached the river, and in a third poor little boat, again he sailed
down the passage. There was the swift-leaping current, the ugly tusk of
rock staked with wreckage. A moment, a few feet, a turn of the
oar-blade, and he would have been past. But, no! The rock seemed to
fascinate him as the eyes of a snake fascinate a bird. He stared at it
fearfully, a look of terror and despair. Then for the third time, with a
hideous crash, his frail boat was piled up in a pitiful ruin.

He was beaten now.

He climbed on the bank, and there, with a last look at the ugly snarl of
waters, and the jagged up-thrust of that evil rock, he put a bullet
smashing through his brain.

* * * * *

The ice was loose and broken. We were all ready to start in a few days.
The mighty camp was in a ferment of excitement. Every one seemed elated
beyond words. On, once more, to Eldorado!

It was near midnight, but the sky, where the sun had dipped below the
mountain rim, was a sea of translucent green, weirdly and wildly
harmonious with the desolation of the land. On the bleak lake one could
hear the lap of waves, while the high, rocky shore to the left was a
black wall of shadow. I stood by the beach near our boat, all alone in
the wan light, and tried to think calmly of the strange things that had
happened to me.

Surely there was something of Romance left in this old world yet if one
would only go to seek it. Here I was, sun-browned, strong, healthy,
having come through many trials and still on the edge of adventure, when
I might, but for my own headstrong perversity, have yet been vegetating
on the hills of Glengyle. A great exultation welled up in me, the voice
of youth and ambition, the lust to conquer. I would succeed, I would
wrest from the vast, lonely, mysterious North some of its treasure. I
would be a conqueror.

Silent and abstracted, I looked into the brooding disk of sheeny sky, my
eyes dream-troubled.

Then I felt a ghostly hand touch my arm, and with a great start of
surprise, I turned.

"Berna!"

CHAPTER XI

The girl was wearing a thin black shawl around her shoulders, but in the
icy wind blowing from the lake, she trembled like a wand. Her face was
pale, waxen, almost spiritual i