Alton, of course, knew this, but when still some distance from the opposite side, had apparently to choose between a somewhat perilous effort and an unwished-for descent of the rapid.  He glanced at its foaming rush a moment, and then decided upon the former.  Several times he dipped the pole and won a yard with the strenuous thrust, and then what he partly expected happened.  The bark seemed to be slipping away beneath him, and, as throwing himself forward upon his belongings he flung an arm about it, the log rolled slowly, and there was a splash in the water.  He had restored the equilibrium, but one blanket and the flour-bag were in the river.  In another few minutes he waded ashore, and drew the butt of the log out upon the shingle before he turned to glance ruefully at the sliding water.

“If I went back and plunged for it I might get that flour,” he said.  “Still, I should have to go down the rapid with it, and I mightn’t want it then.”

Dripping from the waist with snow water, he reslung his traps, glanced back at the sombre bush behind him and then plunged into that ahead, while the dusk was closing in when he stood panting amidst the stumps of smaller trees.  The mark of the axe was on them, and somebody had piled up a mound of rock and stones.  Alton drew in a long breath and shook off his burden.

“Jimmy’s claim,” he said.  “It may mean—­most anything—­to me.”

Then, though his pulses throbbed, and he could feel his blood tingling, he fell to work systematically, groping about the excavation the dead man had made where the snowslide had rent apart the forest and scored out the rock for him.  Here and there he smashed a fragment of it with the back of the axe, or picked up a discoloured stone of unusual gravity and compared it with the pieces he took out of a little bag, until at last he stood up stiffly and flung his head back.

All round him the forest rose dim and sombre, flinging back the roar of the rapid in long pulsations of sound, and its solitude was not lessened by the presence of the wet and weary man standing so still that his outline was scarcely perceptible against the trunks behind him.  Save for the light of triumph in his eyes there was nothing in the whole scene to uplift the fancy.  The man’s garments were tattered, the river had not washed the mire from him, and one of his boots was gaping, but the discovery he had made was fraught with great possibilities for that lonely valley, and changes in the destinies of many other men.  It had lain wrapped in stillness, a sanctuary for the beasts of the forest, countless ages since the world was young, being made ready slowly by frost and sun, and now man had come.

For five long minutes Alton looked into the future, and once more the fragrance of English roses seemed to steal faintly through the resinous odours of the firs.  Then he shook himself, and glanced again dubiously at the river.