w you've been feeling. It
was a right good idea of yours to come here. Others before you
have tried the shady side of New York and Paris, and it's the wrong
treatment. It's Hell, that's what it is, for them. Now that young
woman--we got to speak of her--is about the most beautiful and the most
fascinating of her sex--I'll grant that to start with--but she isn't
worth the life of a snail, much less the life of a strong man."

"You are, quite right," Tavernake confessed, shortly. "I know I was
a fool--a fool! If I could think of any adjective that would meet the
case, I'd use it, but there it is. I chucked things and I came here. You
haven't come down to tell me your opinion of me, I suppose?"

"Not by any manner of means," Pritchard admitted. "I came down first to
tell you that you were a fool, if it was necessary. Since you know it,
it isn't. We'll pass on to the next stage, and that is, what are you
going to do about it?"

"It is in my mind at the present moment," Tavernake announced, "to leave
here. The only trouble is, I am not very keen about London."

Pritchard nodded thoughtfully.

"That's all right," he agreed. "London's no place for a man, anyway. You
don't want to learn the usual tricks of money-making. Money that's made
in the cities is mostly made with stained fingers. I have a different
sort of proposal to make."

"Go ahead," Tavernake said. "What is it?"

"A new country," Pritchard declared, altering the angle of his cigar,
"a virgin land, mountains and valleys, great rivers to be crossed, all
sorts of cold and heat to be borne with, a land rich with minerals--some
say gold, but never mind that. There is oil in parts, there's tin,
there's coal, and there's thousands and thousands of miles of forest.
You're a surveyor?"

"Passed all my exams," Tavernake agreed tersely.

"You are the man for out yonder," Pritchard insisted. "I've two years'
vacation--dead sick of this city life I am--and I am going to put you on
the track of it. You don't know much about prospecting yet, I reckon?"

"Nothing at all!"

"You soon shall," Pritchard went on. "We'll start from Winnipeg. A few
horses, some guides, and a couple of tents. We'll spend twenty weeks, my
friend, without seeing a town. What do you think of that?"

"Gorgeous!" Tavernake muttered.

"Twenty weeks we'll strike westward. I know the way to set about the
whole job. I know one or two of the capitalists, too, and if we don't
map out some of the gra