o, I'll tell you the sequel.
Otherwise--and things do happen unexpectedly--there's a leather case in my
pocket, and in case of accident I hope my partners will act on what they
find in it. Perhaps some one in England would bless them if they did."

He ceased, and some time later a vibratory monotone commenced far up under
the stars, gathering strength and volume until it rolled in long
pulsations down the steep ranges' side.

"It's more common in spring," remarked the prospector, "but some ice
bridge has busted under pressure, and the snow is coming down. There'll be
most astonishing chaos in the next valley."

I cannot say how long the great harmony lasted, for we listened
spellbound, unheeding the passage of time, while the cedars trembled about
us as the tremendous diapason leaped from peak to peak and the valleys
flung back the echoes in majestic antiphones. There was the roar of
sliding gravel, the crash of rent-down forest, and the rumble of ice and
snow, each mingling its own note, softened by distance, in the
supernatural orchestra, until the last echoes died away and there was a
breathless hush.

"We have heard great things," said Johnston; "what did the surveyor say?
Not an ounce of the ruin is wasted; the lower Fraser wheat-lands are built
that way. There's a theme for a master to write a Benedicite. Grinding ice
chanting to the thunders of the snow, and the very cedars listening in the
valleys. Well, I'll make him a free present of the fancy; we're merely
gold miners, or we hope to be. Good-night, and remember the early start
to-morrow."

He was up long before the late dawn, and it was still early when we waded
scarcely knee-deep among the boulders of a curiously shrunken stream.
Smooth-ground rocks cumbered its bed, and the muddy water that gurgled
among them was stained red instead of the usual glacial green, while, as I
wondered where the rest had gone, the prospector remarked, "These blamed
rivers are low in winter, but I never saw one quite so ashamed of itself
as this. It's the snow-slide we heard last night damming the valley, and
there'll be a rush worth seeing when it does break through."

I had occasion afterward to learn that he was right, but meanwhile we
followed the banks of the river up-stream, still looking for the gorge.
Several times the prospector fancied that he identified a transverse
opening, and then confessed that he was not even sure of the river,
because, as he said, there wer