“It’s rather curious you met the girl,” Scott observed.

“I don’t think so.  When we found her address among the truck Strange had left with the foreman, it was the proper thing for me to tell her he was drowned.  This led to another letter or two, and when I said I was going to Montreal she asked me to meet her.”

“Is she like Strange?”

“Not at all,” Thirlwell declared.  “In fact, although her letters ought to have prepared me, I got something of a surprise.  She was not the kind of girl I had expected to meet.  I understand she teaches at a Toronto school.”

“She must have some talent to get a post there,” Scott remarked when he had asked the name of the school.  Then he paused and vaguely indicated the North.  “Well, it’s a romantic story!  Nobody knows yet what there is in the rocks up yonder, but we have heard of other prospectors striking pay-dirt and making nothing of their discovery.  Rumors about mysterious lodes are common in a mineral belt, and while they’re often imaginative, my notion is that now and then there’s some fact behind the fiction.  Fur-traders in Alaska heard such tales long before the Klondyke strike.”

He stopped, for there were steps outside, and Thirlwell, leaning forward, saw a man come up the trail.  The fellow had a dark, sullen face and wore an old gray shirt and ragged overalls.  He walked with a slight limp, in consequence of getting his foot frost-bitten on a winter journey, but he was an expert trapper and had penetrated far into the wilds.  When skins were scarce he worked at the mine, but generally left his employment after a drunken bout.

“I wonder whether Driscoll believes in Strange’s lode,” Scott resumed as the man went by.  “He knew him better than anybody else.  They went North together once or twice, and had been away some time when Strange was drowned coming back.”

“Strange wouldn’t tell Black Steve where he thought the lode was,” Thirlwell objected.  “I understand they only kept together until they had portaged their outfit across the divide.”

“Strange would leave a trail a trapper could follow.  Then I don’t see why Steve stops here instead of locating on better hunting ground.  It looks as if he didn’t want to leave the Shadow.”

“I don’t see how stopping here would help him to find the lode,” said Thirlwell, who went to the door.

It was getting dark and except for the turmoil of the river the bush was very still.  The green behind the pines had faded, and they rose against the sky indistinctly in smears of shadowy blue.  They had neither height nor beauty, but straggled back, battered and stunted by the winds, among the rocks until they faded from sight.  There was not much to attract a white man in the desolation of tangled bush, but as he glanced across it, looking to the North, a hint of mystery in its silence appealed to Thirlwell.  He felt that the wilderness challenged him to find a clue to the treasure it hid.  Then he reflected with a smile that it was taking much for granted to admit that there was treasure there, and he went back into the shack and lighted the lamp.