d the next morning,
before I was awake, he was gone.'

"At last her real fear was clear to me. There is a terrible fascination
about those Alaska gold streams. Each gravel bar has just showing enough
to lead a man on and on. He hugs the belief from hour to hour he is on the
brink of a great find, until he has eyes for nothing but the colors in the
sand. He forgets hunger, weariness, everything, and finally, if rescue
fails him, he sinks in complete collapse. More than once I had come on
such a wreck, straying demented, babbling, all but famished in the hills.
And I was sorry for that little woman. I understood the pitch she must
have reached to speak so freely to a passing stranger. But it was hard to
find just the right thing to say, and while I stood choosing words, she
hurried to explain that two days before she had taken the dog and tramped
up-stream as far as she had dared, hoping to meet her husband, and that
she had intended to go even farther that day, but had been prevented, as I
saw, by the bear, who had prowled about the cabin the greater part of the
night. The setter's continual barking and growling had failed to drive him
away.

"'If you had gone this morning,' I said, 'I should have missed you; then I
shouldn't have known about your husband. I am on my way up this canyon,
and I shall look for him. And, when I find him, I shall do my best to
bring him in touch with the outside world again.'"

Tisdale paused. The abrupt slope that over-topped the portable cabin began
to take shape in the darkness. It had the appearance of a sail looming
through fog. Then the shadows scattered, and the belated moon, lifting
over the dunes beyond the Columbia, silvered the mouth of the gorge. It
was as though that other distant canyon, of which he was thinking, opened
before him into unknown solitudes.

Miss Armitage leaned forward, watching his face, waiting for the issue of
the story.

"And you found him?" she asked at last.

"Yes. In the end." Tisdale's glance returned and, meeting hers, the grim
lines in his face relaxed. "But there was a long and rough tramp first.
She urged me to take the setter, and I saw the advantage in having a good
dog with me on such a search; any cleft, or thicket, or sprinkle of
boulders, might easily conceal a man's body from one passing only a few
feet off--but, much as he favored me, he was not to be coaxed far from his
mistress; so I suggested she should go, too.

"'Oh,' she said, cat