the
liquid golden sunlight filling the warm, throbbing air, spreading itself
in dazzling sheets upon the water, and glinting in ten thousand
glittering points on the flying spray thrown up by a steamer's screw. It
was the steamer _Prince_, homeward-bound from Alaska, carrying
passengers and a cargo as rich and yellow as the sunshine. And as if it
knew of its precious and costly charge, the steamer cut proudly through
the turbulent water, cleaving its straight passage homeward, homeward.
On the deck of the boat, leaning back idly in a long chair, his calm,
grey eyes fixed on the receding shores, where the golden sunshine seemed
palpitating on their perilous loveliness, Talbot was sitting, with the
freshening breeze stirring his hair and bringing to him the breath of a
thousand spring flowers on the land. He was returning, and returning
successful, with his work accomplished, his toil over, his aim achieved,
and amongst all the lines of pain stamped on his pale and quiet face
there was written a certain triumph, that yet perhaps was not so much
triumph as relief. It was just four months since that terrible night
when he had lost both his comrades, just a little less than four months
since he had seen them both laid side by side in their lonely grave in
the west gulch; and those four months would ever be a blot of horrible
blackness on his life. Should he ever be able to forget the blank
desolation that had closed in upon him night after night as he sat by
his lonely hearth or paced the floor, his steps alone breaking the awful
stillness? Yet he had forced himself to stay and face it, had continued
his work and his method of life unchanged. His men had noted little
difference in him. He had stayed the time he had appointed for himself,
had accomplished his self-appointed task, and at last, when the summer
burst in upon the gulch and loosened all Nature's fetters, he found
himself also free; and now, like a black curtain rent in twain and torn
from the bright face of a picture, the clouds of the past seemed falling
away, leaving his future clear to his gaze. It stretched before him
bright as the laughing sunlit sea beneath his eyes. If they could but
have shared his joy, if they could have had their home-coming, his
fellow-toilers, his fellow-prisoners! and the salt tears stung his lids
until he closed them, shutting out the vivid yellow light, as he
thought of the desolate grave in the gulch.

The fresh, cool air fanned h