o; they don't matter now. I was a fool to think I
could ever give her up, a fool. Now I know that as long as there's life
and strength in my body, I'll fight for her. Oh, I'm not the
sentimentalist I was six months ago. I've lived since then. I can hold
my own now. I can meet men on their own level. I can fight, I can win.
I don't care any more, after what I've gone through. I don't set any
particular value on my life. I'll throw it away as recklessly as the
best of them. I'm going to have a fierce fight for that girl, and if I
lose there'll be no more 'me' left to fight. Don't try to reason with
me. Reason be damned! I'm going to Dawson, and a hundred men couldn't
hold me."

"You seem to have some new stunts in your repertoire," he said, looking
at me curiously; "you've got me guessing. Sometimes I think you're a
candidate for the dippy-house, then again I think you're on to yourself.
There's a grim set to your mouth and a hard look in your eyes that I
didn't use to see. Maybe you can hold up your end. Well, anyway, if you
will go I wish you good luck."

So, bidding good-bye to the big cabin, with my two partners looking
ruefully after me, I struck off down Bonanza. It was mid-October. A
bitter wind chilled me to the marrow. Once more the land lay stark
beneath its coverlet of snow, and the sky was wan and ominous. I
travelled fast, for a painful anxiety gripped me, so that I scarce took
notice of the improved trail, of the increased activity, of the heaps of
tailings built up with brush till they looked like walls of a
fortification. All I thought of was Dawson and Berna.

How curious it was, this strange new strength, this indifference to
self, to physical suffering, to danger, to public opinion! I thought
only of the girl. I would make her marry me. I cared nothing for what
had happened to her. I might be a pariah, an outcast for the rest of my
days; at least I would save her, shield her, cherish her. The thought
uplifted me, exalted me. I had suffered beyond expression. I had
rearranged my set of ideas; my concept of life, of human nature, had
broadened and deepened. What did it matter if physically they had
wronged her? Was not the pure, virgin soul of her beyond their reach?

I was just in time to see the last boat go out. Already the river was
"throwing ice," and every day the jagged edges of it crept further
towards midstream. An immense and melancholy mob stood on the wharf as
the little steamer backed off