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It was a perfect scene, typical of the greater foothills where Nature permits nothing human to disturb her hush. On every hand hills rose to immense heights, bald of head, but densely clad on their lower slopes with forests of every shade of green. Soft, and gracious, and pleasant to gaze upon, the forests were deep, and dark, and well-nigh illimitable. They were full of preying animal life, and even in the full of daylight the howl of coyote and the harsher bay of prowling timber wolf came echoing down the aisles of leafless trunks.

But Cy Liskard was all unconcerned for Nature’s sounds, for Nature’s moods. He was by no means condemned to a lifelong existence in the world’s dark places. He was there by selection and of deliberate purpose, and his purpose appeared fairly obvious. For there, below him, on the trickling creek, lay the complete, primitive equipment of the gold-seeker’s craft.

But for all his expressionless gaze was upon these things his thought was far away, concerned only with its contemplation of the thing which lay ahead at the end of the further journey upon which he was about to embark. As with all the hardy creatures who seek treasure in the remotenesses of the northern world, the joy of return to the cities of men was a passionate yearning that had no limits.