usly wide and
filled with the purple smoke of many fires. There was the golden valley,
silent for centuries, now strident with human cries, vehement with human
strife. There was the timbered basin of the Klondike bleakly rising to
mountains eloquent of death. It was dominating, appalling, this vastness
without end, this unappeasable loneliness. Glad was I to turn again to
where, like white pebbles on a beach, gleamed the tents of the gold-born
city.

Somewhere amid that confusion of canvas, that muddle of cabins, was
Berna, maybe lying in some wide-eyed vigil of fear, maybe staining with
hopeless tears her restless pillow. Somewhere down there--Oh, I must
find her!

I returned to the town. I was tramping its long street once more, that
street with its hundreds of canvas signs. It was a city of signs. Every
place of business seemed to have its fluttering banner, and beneath
these banners moved the ever restless throng. There were men from the
mines in their flannel shirts and corduroys, their Stetsons and high
boots. There were men from the trail in sweaters and mackinaws, German
socks and caps with ear-flaps. But all were bronzed and bearded,
fleshless and clean-limbed. I marvelled at the seriousness of their
faces, till I remembered that here was no problem of a languorous
sunland, but one of grim emergency. It was a man's game up here in the
North, a man's game in a man's land, where the sunlight of the long,
long day is ever haunted by the shadow of the long, long night.

Oh, if I could only find her! The land was a great symphony; she the
haunting theme of it.

I bought a copy of the "Nugget" and went into the Sourdough Restaurant
to read it. As I lingered there sipping my coffee and perusing the paper
indifferently, a paragraph caught my eye and made my heart glow with
sudden hope.

CHAPTER II

Here was the item:

Jack Locasto loses $19,000.

"One of the largest gambling plays that ever occurred in Dawson
came off last night in the Malamute Saloon. Jack Locasto of
Eldorado, well known as one of the Klondike's wealthiest
claim-owners, Claude Terry and Charlie Haw were the chief actors in
the game, which cost the first-named the sum of $19,000.

"Locasto came to Dawson from his claim yesterday. It is said that
before leaving the Forks he lost a sum ranging in the neighbourhood
of $5,000. Last night he began playing in the Malamute with