ing to it. The cold snapped at me till my cheeks tingled,
and my eyes felt as if they could spark. Oh, life was sweet!

Bother! In my elation I had forgotten to get off at the Old Inn and
read my note. Never mind, I would keep it till I reached the Forks.

As I spun along, I thought of how changed it all was from the Bonanza I
first knew. How I remembered tramping along that hillside slope, packing
a sack of flour over a muddy trail, a poor miner in muddy overalls! Now
I was driving a smart horse on a fine road. I was an operator of a
first-class mine. I was a man of business, of experience. Higher and
higher my spirits rose.

How fast the horse flew! I would be at the Forks in no time. I flashed
past cabin windows. I saw the solitary oil-lamp and the miner reading
his book or filling his pipe. Never was there a finer, more intelligent
man; but his day was passing. The whole country was falling into the
hands of companies. Soon, thought I, one or two big combines would
control the whole wealth of that land. Already they had their eyes on
it. The gold-ships would float and roar where the old-time miner toiled
with pick and pan. Change! Change!

I almost fancied I could see the monster dredges ploughing up the
valley, where now men panted at the windlass. I could see vast heaps of
tailings filling the creek-bed; I could hear the crash of the steel
grizzlies; I could see the buckets scooping up the pay-dirt. I felt
strangely prophetic. My imagination ran riot in all kinds of wonders,
great power plants, quartz discoveries. Change! Change!

Yes, the stamp-mill would add its thunder to the other voices; the
country would be netted with wires, and clamorous for far and wide. Man
had sought out this land where Silence had reigned so long. He had
awakened the echoes with the shot of his rifle and the ring of his axe.
Silence had raised a startled head and poised there, listening. Then,
with crack of pick and boom of blast, man had hurled her back. Further
and further had he driven her. With his advancing horde, mad in their
lust for the loot of the valley, he had banished her. His engines had
frightened her with their canorous roar. His crashing giants had driven
her cowering to the inviolate fastnesses of her hills. And there she
broods and waits.

But Silence will return. To her was given the land that she might rule
and have dominion over it forever. And in a few years the clamour will
cease, the din will die away. In