s pool? Maybe ye'll no like the passage in
the light o' dawn, but ye cannot cross till then."

He spoke with a tone of certainty, and knowing that only those who live by
them can predict the eccentric rise and fall of these torrents I was glad
to defer to his judgment. It was only for Ormond's sake that we desired to
press on at all, and Harry observed truthfully, "It wouldn't do the poor
fellow any good to drown him."

It was late, but we still loitered about the stove, and when once the old
man stood in the open doorway glancing toward the foaming rush of the
river that I could see beyond him, as though to gauge its force by the
roar which now filled the room, one of the party remarked: "Old Hector's a
curious critter, with a kink inside his brain, but there's many a free
miner owes a big debt to him. He knows each trick of the river; the Siwash
say it talks to him, and when he says clear passage I guess you can cross.
I've heard that the Roads and Trails Authorities allow him a few dollars
subsidy, but he doesn't stay here for that. He was mixed up in some ugly
doings in the gold days, and reckons he's squaring it by keeping the
crossing. And I guess he comes pretty near doing it, too, for there's a
good many lives to his credit, if that counts for anything, and I'm
figuring it does."

He ceased as our host returned and said, "She's falling half-a-foot an
hour, an' for the sake of the sick man I'll see ye over with the break of
dawn. Got hurt on the gold trail--ye need not tell me. There's no a sand
bar or gully from Fraser till Oominica Hector did not travel thirty years
ago. They came up in their thousands then, an' only the wolf an' eagle ken
where the maist o' them lie."

"That's true," said the grizzled prospector. "I was in the last of it when
Caribou was played out and we struck for the Peace country and Cassiar,"
and Hector stared past him through the smoke wreaths with vacant eyes that
seemed to look far back into bygone years.

"There was red gold to be had for the seeking then," he said. "We won it
lightly, an' we spent it ill. Ay wine an' cards, an' riot' when they
brought the painted women in, until the innocent blood was spilt, and
Hector came down from Quesnelle with the widow's black curse upon him--but
it was his partner shot Cassell in the back. The widow's curse; and that's
maybe why Mary Macdonal' lies long years her lone among the hills o'
Argyle."

"Tell us how you cleaned out the Hydrauli