cier that
make fortunes for the first men, while the rank and file pan out defeat
and disappointment. There was the quartz body above, stringers and veins
of it reaching through the graywackes and slate, but to handle it
Weatherbee must set up a stamp-mill; and only a line of pack-mules from
the Andes, and another line of steamships could transport the ore to the
nearest smelter, on Puget Sound. So--he took up the long trek northward
again, to the Tanana. Think of it! The irony of it!"

Tisdale rose and turned on the step to look down at her. The light from
the lantern intensified the furrows between his brooding eyes. "And think
what it meant to Weatherbee to have seen, as he had, day after day, hour
after hour, the heart of another man's wife laid bare, while to his own he
himself was simply a source of revenue."

Miss Armitage too rose and stood meeting his look. Her lip trembled a
little, but the blue lights flamed in her eyes. "You believe that," she
said, and her voice dropped into an unexpected note. "You believe he threw
away that rich discovery for the few hundreds of dollars he sent his wife;
but I know--she was told--differently. She thought he was glad to--escape--
at so small a price. He wrote he was glad she had reconsidered that trip;
Alaska was no place for her."

"Madam," Tisdale remonstrated softly, "you couldn't judge David Weatherbee
literally by his letters. If you had ever felt his personality, you would
have caught the undercurrent, deep and strong, sweeping between the lines.
It wasn't himself that counted; it was what was best for her. You couldn't
estimate him by other men; he stood, like your white mountain, alone above
the crowd. And he set a pedestal higher than himself and raised his wife
there to worship and glorify. A word from her at any time would have
turned the balance and brought him home; her presence, her sympathy, even
that last season at the Aurora mine, would have brought him through. I
wish you had seen his face that day I met him below the glacier and had
told him about the woman waiting down the gorge. 'My God, Tisdale,' he
said, 'suppose it had been my wife.'"

Miss Armitage stood another moment, locking her hands one over the other
in a tightening grip. Her lip trembled again, but the words failed. She
turned and walked uncertainly the few steps to the end of the porch.

"You believe she might have influenced him, but I do not. Oh, I see, I
see, how you have measured hi