on for the girl, tried to think of the mere human
sweetness that would go hand in hand with his victory over evil. If he
won that bright clean soul for God, would he not also win that loved
human form for himself? But even the voice of passion was drowned in the
clamour of the greater greed.

The next morning, as soon as it was light, Stephen went out to his
claims. None of his men had come up to work yet. Stephen stood and
looked over the stretch of ground beneath which he believed his fortunes
lay. A light covering of snow had fallen on it during the night and lay
about a foot deep in one unbroken sheet, not even the mark of a bird's
foot disturbed its blank evenness: the claims looked very cold and
drear in the dull dusky grey light of the dawn under that leaden sky.
But Stephen's heart beat quickly as he gazed upon them. What did it
matter that cold, dreary, surface, when the gold lay glowing underneath!

Stephen felt as only a man of his sensitive conscience could feel his
defeat of the previous night. His heart, all his better nature was
crushed under a sickening load of mortification, and he sought
desperately to find relief and justification for himself in
contemplating the treasure for whose sake he had accepted it. As in
other circumstances a man would solace himself for all sacrifices by
gazing on the face of a mistress for whom he had relinquished worldly
ambitions, and find excuses for himself in her beauty, telling himself a
hundred times she was worth it all; so Stephen now gazed upon his
claims, for which he had given up his scruples, his principles, his
conscience, and his God, and tried to hug to himself the comfort that
they were worth it. After a few seconds he tramped across the frozen
snow to the line marked out by the banks of gravel where they had been
at work the previous day.

That evening he could not stay in his cabin, he felt restless and ill at
ease. A nervous sense of anxiety hung over him. He seemed to himself to
be expecting some misfortune. His nerves, weakened by the lonely life he
had been living for the past months, and exhausted by the sleepless
hours of the previous night, kept presenting picture after picture of
possible ills. He looked over both his revolvers, to make sure they were
in good order for defence if he were attacked that night. Then he drew
his fur cap tightly down on his forehead and went out. The stillness of
his own cabin and the clamour of his own thoughts were