apped a heavy collection of
sundries upon its back, while the owner of the shanty watched us with a
fine assumption of pity.

"Lots of gold up yonder! Well, I guess there is," he said. "But maybe
you'll get mighty tired before you find it, and this isn't quite the
season to go sloshing round glaciers and snow-fields. Don't I wish I was
coming? Can't say I do. Go slow and steady is my motto, and you'll turn
more gold out of the earth with the plough than you ever will with the
drill, and considerably easier, too. There's another outfit yonder ahead
of you, and a third one coming along. Look in this way if you come back
hungry."

Johnston smote the pack-horse, and there was a clash of rifles, axes, tin
pans and kettles as we moved off into the forest, which was free of
undergrowth here.

"That was a sensible man," I observed. "Harry, I can't help feeling that
this gold hunting is not our business, and no good will come of it."

"Then you needn't say so," Harry answered shortly. "If I were troubled
with old women's presentiments I should keep them to myself. The man we
have with us knows the country well, and from what the other half revealed
we ought to find something. I'm wondering who got up the other expedition,
unless it's Ormond. The Day Spring is doing even worse lately, and the
Colonel has gone down to Vancouver to raise fresh funds or sell it to a
company, which would be rough on the company. Your uncle and your cousin
are wintering there."

This gave me food for thought, and I trudged on, dreamily noticing how the
tramp of feet and the clatter of metal broke through the ghostly silence,
while half-seen figures of man and beast appeared and vanished among the
trunks, and the still woods seemed listening to our march. I knew that in
the old days the feet of a multitude had worn trails through these ranges
as they pressed on toward the treasure of Cassiar and Caribou, and that
the bones of many were strewn broadcast across the region into which we
were venturing. Perhaps it was because of the old Lancashire folk-lore I
once had greedily listened to, but I could not altogether disbelieve in
presentiments, and my dislike to the journey deepened until Johnston's
voice rose clearly through the frosty air: "There's shining gold in heaps,
I'm told, by the banks of Sacramento."

The rest was the usual forecastle gibberish, but, and it may have been
that our partner being born with the wanderer's spirits could give
m