There had been long nights of misery when he had lain, half-fed and too cold to sleep, wrapped in dripping blankets beside a feeble, sputtering fire, while the deluge thrashed the roaring pines.

The bustle of the city jarred on him that afternoon, and he wandered out of it, but the march, parched with thirst, through the feathery ashes of the brulee, rose up in his memory as he walked aimlessly toward the prairie, and he recalled Grenfell lying beside the lode he had died to find.

It became a grim duty to hold his own, and once more he determined that his enemies should crush him before they laid their grasping hands on the mine.

He shrank, however, from going back to Montreal and waiting there in suspense, and by the time he retraced his steps to his hotel he had decided that this was out of the question.

He wrote a few lines to Wannop and started for the bush with the next day's train.
It was dark when he reached the camp, after an arduous journey, and found Devine and Saunders sitting beside the fire.