“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, catching at the chance, ’do you think Jerry can make up for the delay, if I do?  I will travel my best, I promise you.’  And she led the way, picking up the faint trail and setting a pace that I knew must soon tire her, while the dog brushed by us, bounding ahead and rushing back and expressing his satisfaction in all sorts of manoeuvers.