Talbot made his start back to the cabin later than he intended; he had knocked at Winters' cabin before leaving the town, but all the occupants were out, and there had been no response.

It was afternoon, and already the uncompromising cold of evening had entered into the air; the sky was grey everywhere, and dark, almost black, in front of him; it seemed to hang low, frowning and ominous, over the desolate snowy waste that stretched before him: there was no snow falling yet, only the threat of it written in the black and dreary sky that faced him. His cheeks and chin felt stiff and frozen already, as if a thin mask of ice were drawn over them, and his eyes were sore and tired from the continuous glare of the snow. The little pony beside him plodded along the path patiently, and his master at intervals drew a hand from a comfortable pocket to lay it encouragingly on his neck, at which familiar caress the pony would throw up his head and step out faster for some paces. Talbot felt sorry for the little beast toiling along under his heavy though carefully packed burden of stores, cans of oil, loaves, and every sort of miscellaneous provisions, and would have spoken cheeringly to it, but his lips felt too stiff and painful to form the words, and so man and brute toiled along in silence over the trail under the angry sky. As he walked, Talbot's thoughts went back involuntarily to the picture of Stephen sitting smoking by the stove in the snug interior of Bill Winters' cabin; he felt instinctively, as surely as if he had seen it, that he would so sit through the afternoon, and by evening he would be finding his way down to the nearest saloon and pass the hours there with Katrine; and he compared him vaguely with himself, tired with tramping through the town from store to store, half frozen while he stood to pack the pony, and now labouring up alone to his cabin in the gulch.

He wondered dimly whether it would turn out that he should ever realise a reward for his toil, whether he should live to get out of this icy corner of the world, or whether he should die and rot here, caught in this great snow-trap, in this open grave, where the living were buried. He wondered a little, but his mind was not one inclined to abstract thought. He spent very little time in retrospection, reflection, and contemplation, very little time in thinking of any sort, and on this account possessed so great a stock of energy for acting. Each human being has only a certain amount of energy supplied him with which to do the work of his life. Thinking, speaking, and acting are all portions of this work, and whatever of his energy he consumes in any one, so much the less has he for the others. Thinking, the formation of ideas, is hard work; speaking, the expression of ideas, is hard work; and acting, the carrying out of ideas, is hard work. It is false to suppose that the first two are natural, instinctive, involuntary movements of the brain, and that only the last requires effort.

Talbot thought very little and spoke very little. His ideas came to him in simple form; they were not elaborated in his mind nor in his speech, they turned into actions immediately or died quietly without giving him any trouble or wasting his time. A decision once made he carried out. He never thought about it afterwards, or frittered away his strength in hours of torturing doubt as to whether it was a good one to have made, or whether some other might not have been better. Once made, he kept to it, good or bad, leaving it to chance whether he died or succeeded in his attempt to carry it out. And this conservation of energy in all other mental processes resulted in a splendid strength for action and a limitless endurance in the carrying out of his decisions.

And as he walked now he thought very little, except in a resigned way, of the physical discomfort he was enduring, and of the time when he should reach his cabin. Dusk had already fallen before he came to the gulch, and he had to strain his eyes to find the narrow trail which descended the side of the gorge. His log cabin, carefully and solidly constructed, stood half-way down the northern slope of the gulch, on a sort of natural platform formed by the vagaries of the now narrowed stream in its younger and wilder days. Beneath the cabin stretched his claims, 500 feet of dry soil on the slope of the hill, 100 feet this side of the stream and fairly in the creek, and 100 feet on the farther side, a stretch of 700 feet in all, and of a quality that made it at that time the richest claim for fifty miles round. Shafts, reaching down to bed rock, were sunk all over it, and great mounds of frozen gravel beside them showed how untiringly they had been worked. In addition to these, the man's native energy had prompted him to drive a tunnel horizontally for some distance into the side of the hill that rose steeply behind the cabin. The tunnel pierced the hill for 100 feet, and at the end a shaft had been sunk to bed rock, and it was from here at present that the highest grade ore was coming. Moved by an instinct to protect what he intuitively felt would be his richest possession, Talbot had built his tunnel in one solid block with the cabin, and closed its outer end with a huge door, well provided with bars and bolts. So long as this door was successfully held, no claim-jumper could penetrate into the tunnel or reach the shaft at the end. By this means, too, a double protection was afforded the living cabin, though of this he thought comparatively little, for the face of the cabin presented nothing but its one small window and this huge solid door. Upon opening this you found yourself in the tunnel; if you kept straight on you reached the shaft; if you entered the small door upon your left hand you found yourself in the interior of the living cabin.

The gulch ran east and west, and at sunset at some times in the year a red light from the dying sun would fall into it, like a tongue of flame, and the whole gulch would seem on fire. At such moments Talbot would cease his work and stand looking up the gorge, with the red light falling on his face and banishing its careworn pallor. No one knew what he was thinking of in those moments, whether he was recalling Italian or Egyptian skies that had been as fair, or whether for a moment some vanished face seemed to look at him from out those brilliant hues, or if merely the great sheets of gold that spread above the gulch brought visions of that wealth he was giving his best years to attain. No one who met him knew much about him, except that he was an Englishman, had travelled much and experienced many different forms of life, and finally come to the Klondike,—but why this last? He was believed to have been rich before he came: was it merely to increase his wealth, or was there some other reason? Was there any one awaiting his return? There were several portraits in his cabin of soft and lovely faces, but then the number was confusing, and the most curious of the men who worked under him could not come to any satisfying conclusion. All they knew was that he worked harder than any common miner, that his reserve was unbroken, and his life one continual self-denial. There were thirty men in all who worked for him, and by them all he was respected and feared rather than liked. There was a chilling reserve wrapped about him, an utter absence of ingenuousness and frankness of character, that prevented any affection growing up amongst the men for their master, and his attitude towards them was summed up in the answer he gave to an acquaintance who once asked him how he got on with his men, if he had any friends amongst them. Talbot had raised his dark, marked eyebrows and merely said coldly, "I don't make friends of miners."

Stephen Wood's cabin was a little higher up the gulch by several yards, and the claims of the two men had been staked out side by side. A great friendship had grown up between the two, such a friendship as common danger, common privations, common aims, and Nature's awful loneliness drives any two human beings in each other's proximity into. But besides this friendship there was a quiet liking on Talbot's part for this weak, impulsive, boyish character, so unlike his own, and on Stephen's side a warm admiration for all Talbot's qualities that he could not and yet wished to emulate. He, as others, was completely excluded from the elder man's confidence, and knew nothing of his past or what was likely to be his future; but then Stephen was one of those people always so deeply absorbed in himself, his own aims and views, that he really never noticed that his manifold confidences were never returned in the smallest degree. He would come over to Talbot's cabin in the evening, seat himself on the opposite side of the fire, and talk incessantly. Talbot would allow him to do so until he felt too much bored, when he would rise and quietly tell him to go. Stephen would hastily apologise and retire, to return the following night quite unabashed, with more views and aims to impart. In the first week of their acquaintance Talbot had heard all about his home life—about the little English village, and the red brick, ivy-covered school-house, where he had been master since he was eighteen; of the village schoolmistress he had loved, because she was so good, and had abandoned, presumably for the same reason; of his doubts, fears, hopes, wishes, and intentions,—and after ten months he knew no more of Talbot than he did the day of their first meeting.

The cabins of the men employed by both Stephen and Talbot were dotted over the gulch, some higher and some lower than their own; while a number of the men lived some distance off, a few of them even having lodgings in the town.

When at last Talbot reached his cabin door this evening darkness had completely fallen; there was no light from within to guide him, but with his half-frozen fingers he managed to unlock the outer door, and he and his tired beast went in together. The first thing he thought of when he had closed the great door behind him and lighted up the passage, was to unpack the animal and put him up in the stable which he had built opposite his own cabin door; and it was fully an hour before, having seen the beast comfortably installed, he turned into his own room and struck a light. Here there was only one living thing to greet him, and that was a shabby little black cat that leaped off the bed in the corner and came purring to meet him. One morning he had found this cat lying on his claim with a broken leg and carried it back to his cabin, where he had set the leg and nursed the miserable little creature into recovery. Denbigh, his foreman, who had seen Talbot sitting up for two whole nights to watch the helpless animal, had carried away the impression that the cold, quiet, hard and selfish man, as he appeared to the miners, had another side to his character that they never saw. It was this other side that the kitten was familiar with, and she came mewing and purring with delight towards him. Talbot, who was ready to sink to the floor with exhaustion, stooped and stroked the animal, which followed his steps everywhere as he set about lighting up his stove. It was very quiet, there was absolute silence all round him, and every step of his heavy boots on the wooden floor, every crackle of the igniting wood in the stove, seemed a loud and important sound in the stillness. It was always very quiet at the gulch, Nature's own solemn quiet, except in the summer time, when she filled it with the laughing voices of a thousand streams and rills.

That evening, when his domestic arrangements were all put into working order, his fire blazing, his coffee boiling on the hob, and his table laid, he sank back in his chair with a weary sigh, his hand idly stroking the cat, which had jumped purring on his knee. It seemed lonely without Stephen, and he foresaw that probably many evenings would pass now without his society.

The next morning, when it was yet barely light, and the gulch was holding still all its damp black shadows of the night, Talbot was out tramping over the claims, showing his men where to start new fires, and carefully scanning the fresh gravel as it was thawed and dug out. All his men had a pleasant salutation for him as he passed by, except one, who merely leaned over his work and threw out his spadeful of gravel savagely, as Talbot stopped by the fire. He took no notice apparently of the man, and after a second's survey passed on to the next fire. The man looked after him a moment sulkily and returned to his work. He was a huge fellow, some six feet four, and with a massive frame and head to suit his height. He had been working for many months with Talbot now, and was a valuable labourer on account of his great strength and capacity for work. At first he had been rather a favorite with Talbot, and there hung now in his cabin a first-class six-shooter, the gift of his master when he first came up to the gulch.

Dick Marley had had a devoted admiration for Talbot until the last few months, when it had turned into a bitter, sullen resentment over a matter with which in reality Talbot had absolutely nothing to do. Dick, being a hard and constant worker, had managed to save out of his liberal wages quite a considerable sum, and this he had entrusted to a man on his way to Seattle to invest for him in securities. After a time the man disappeared, and Dick discovered his securities had never been bought, and that he was in fact robbed and cheated. In his first rage and disappointment he cast about unconsciously in his mind for some one besides himself to lay the blame upon, and finding no one he grew daily more and more morose. Hour after hour, as he worked upon the claims, his thoughts would revolve sullenly round his loss, and the offender being beyond his reach, his anger burned against any and every man near him, and apparently chiefly against his employer.

A week passed before Stephen reappeared at the gulch, then one evening after dark, when Talbot was sitting back in his chair, dozing after the cold and fatigue of the day's work, a loud banging came on his outer door, and when he opened it, Stephen, looking very flushed and animated, came into the quiet little room, laden with packages and with a general air of city life about him.

"Well, old man, how are you? Hello, Kitty!" this as he stumbled over the little black cat at his feet. "Well, I've had such a glorious time! I wish you'd stayed down there too: that girl is just the finest creature I've ever seen. Have you anything for a fellow to eat?—I'm perfectly famished. Look here, I've brought you up some cans of things and a bottle of rye, the very best. I say, you look dreadfully blue—what's the matter?"

"Life in the west gulch in the winter isn't particularly exhilarating," answered Talbot, quietly, as he went about his preparations for Stephen's supper.

"How have the men been—all right?" questioned Stephen, as he took off his coat and settled himself in the best chair.

"They have been working pretty steadily, but I notice a difference in them since that fellow Marley has been here. He has been stirring them up, doing a lot of mischief, I think."

"You must assert your authority, I suppose," remarked Stephen pompously, stretching his feet out comfortably in the cheerful blaze. "Perhaps he doesn't know who's master here."

"He will very soon find out then," returned Talbot, so grimly that Stephen looked at him sharply. "Well, what's all your news?" asked Talbot, as if desirous to get away from the question of his men.

"I don't know that there is much, except I've been having a good time. You've looked after my ground and seen to the workings, haven't you? Thanks, I knew you would, and so I felt I could stay down town a little: you're a better hand at managing men than I am, any way,—women too, for that matter; do you know that you impressed Katrine awfully? She has talked about you to me—you are so good-looking, so distinguished, she wants to know whether you are a Count or a Prince in disguise, and all sorts of things."

Talbot smiled. "It is extremely kind of her," he said quietly.

"Oh, I know she's not the kind of girl you admire," said Stephen, in rather a nettled tone. "You wouldn't look at a saloon-keeper's daughter simply because she is a saloon-keeper's daughter; you like a girl in your own rank, all grace and dignity and good manners, and awfully clever and intellectual, and gifted and educated, and all that."

Talbot merely laughed and remained silent, a habit he had which successfully baffled questions, innuendoes, and suppositions alike.

"And any way your passions are engaged somehow, somewhere."

"How do you know that?" asked Talbot, with a hardening of his mouth.

"Know it! why, otherwise you could not lead this dog's life as you do, and you could not be indifferent to a beautiful girl like Katrine,—for she is beautiful, she's not 'pretty' or 'nice,' but she's downright beautiful," returned Stephen, emphasising his remarks by striking the table.

Talbot said nothing, but put more wood in the stove in silence.

"Your supper is ready now; if you are famished, as you said, you'd better have it, and discuss Miss Poniatovsky afterwards," he remarked.

Stephen turned to the table. "Won't you have something too?" he said.

Talbot shook his head. "No, thanks; I'm not hungry."

"You ascetic creature, you never are," replied Stephen, as he began to carve into the cold bacon.

"Well, you know how I detest her surroundings," he began again after a few minutes, "and drinking, and saloons, and almost everything she does, but then I can't help liking her. She's so different from any girl I've ever seen. She attracts me, she holds my thoughts so, and if I could get her to give up all that, if I could alter her views—"

"You would be doing away with that difference from others that is the basis of your attraction," put in Talbot, dryly.

"Well," returned Stephen after a minute, in a sulky tone, "we are all like that,—a man falls in love with a girl, because she is a girl, and then immediately wants to turn her into a married woman."

Talbot laughed. "Good!" he said. "You are quite right."

"It's the altering process we like, and we want to do the alteration ourselves. I showed her my pocket Greek testament yesterday," he continued.

"And was she interested?" inquired Talbot, dryly.

"Not so much as she was in the shooting gallery," admitted Stephen. "I told her how a bible at a man's heart had often saved his life, and she said a pistol had done that too, and she'd rather trust the pistol."

Talbot laughed. "You say you like altering. I should think in Katrine you've a splendid field. If you want to get her down to the schoolmistress pattern, you've employment for a lifetime!"

Stephen flushed, as he always did at any allusion to the girl he had loved as the type of all virtues, and yet had tired of. Good people are always more or less interested in and attracted by the wicked, while the wicked are not generally the least interested in nor attracted by the good. Stephen was drawn towards this reckless daughter of the saloons partly through the sense of her general badness, it formed unconsciously a sort of charm for him, whereas his goodness did not act at all in the same way upon her. To her eyes it was his one great drawback, an overwhelming disadvantage.

He finished his supper in silence, and the two men drew in close to the fire to smoke. That is to say, Stephen did the smoking, as he did the talking. He consumed Talbot's tobacco, and filled Talbot's cabin with its fumes. Talbot himself did not smoke.

Stephen's return to his own claim freed Talbot from the double share of work he had been doing for the last week, and he remained on his own claims all day, tramping from one end to the other, directing where a new shaft should be made, overseeing closely all the work that went on, and doing a good deal of it himself; and in those days he became more clearly conscious than ever of the difference that was growing up in his men's manner towards him. There was a veiled insolence in their replies to his questions, a certain want of promptness in obeying his orders, which caused a curious gleam to come into the quiet grey eyes as, apparently without noticing it, he passed on.

He did not speak of it, not even to his foreman, Denbigh, the man whom he liked and trusted most. He was accustomed to manage his own affairs, and rarely took counsel with any one. He was one of those men who are born with the gift of governing others. He was an organiser, an administrator, by nature. Had he been born to a throne, his kingdom would have been well ruled from end to end, and rarely if ever embroiled with other nations; and the same spirit that would have ruled a kingdom showed itself here in the ruling and management of his seven hundred feet of ground.

He never bullied, never swore, no one had ever seen him in a passion. He gave his orders in a pleasant friendly voice, his manner was quiet, even to gentleness, but he had a way of getting those orders invariably carried out that was hard to analyse. If he said a thing was to be done, it was done, and no one knew of an instance where it was not. He never countermanded an order, and never receded from a position once taken, even if in his own heart he recognised later it was an unwise one. But the forethought and caution, the deliberation in decision that were his by nature, made the occasions on which he regretted an order very seldom, and if such there were, no matter, the order stood. He himself looked upon his word as irrevocable, whether given in promise or command, and instinctively all who came in contact with him looked upon it in the same light. The men, when they made engagements with him and stipulated certain terms for certain work, and other details, never asked for paper, and even refused it when offered. Whatever came from those silent, resolute lips they knew unalterable, unanswerable, final, and absolute; they all trusted his word completely, and it passed amongst them as other men's bond.

Everything on the claims was well organised, all was kept in smooth working order. The men had exact hours of work, exact time for changing off, each his specified work and place on the ground, each his tools, for which he was accountable as long as he worked there.

Talbot's forethought even went far enough to provide for the happy-go-lucky and mostly ungrateful creatures who had no idea of providing for themselves. He established a sick fund, and to this each of the men who worked for him was obliged to subscribe a trifle out of his weekly wages. Then in their not infrequent sickness there was alleviation and comfort waiting for them. If the miners were not his friends they were his dependents, and as such he cared for them and looked after them. He was always friendly in manner to them, always ready to help and assist them, to attend to their wants, to listen to their complaints, and settle the frequent disputes amongst themselves, which they invariably brought to him for decision. If he had not instilled affection into them, they felt an unlimited faith and confidence in his absolute justice.

"He's hard, real hard," they said amongst themselves, "but he'll never go back on you;" and that was the received opinion amongst them.

Although he was conscious now of the feeling growing up amongst his men, he appeared to ignore it entirely. As long as his instructions and commands were carried out, he affected to be in ignorance whether it was with a smiling or a scowling face. He felt certain that the disaffection owed its origin to the man Marley, and he expected every day that some matter would bring this man and himself into a personal conflict, in which he meant to conquer, and he preferred to wait for this to happen than to, in any way, take an initiative step in bringing the covert hostility to light.

It was his method. On the same principle, when one of his debtors, having completely lost his head in blind rage against a quiet order that he should pay what was due, shook his fist in the other's face and threatened to wipe the floor with him, Talbot did not knock the man down, as some might have done. He simply remarked in his dryest tone, "You'd better try it," and for some reason or other the man did not. Shortly after the money was paid.

So now he simply stood his own ground, saw that his work was properly done, and waited until the man courted his own punishment. In the meantime, the men mistook his forbearance, his quietness, his smoothness of tones and manner for weakness, and Marley, a bully by nature, and quite incapable of understanding his employer, grew elated and triumphant.

Stephen had been back at the gulch a fortnight or more, when Talbot found late one afternoon some of his tools broken, and this, combined with other work he had to do in town, decided him to go down that afternoon and return the following day before daylight failed. He got ready, locked up his house, and called upon Stephen to say he was going. Stephen looked quite surprised, Talbot went to town so seldom, and then began to chaff him upon his motives and intentions.

"As it happens, I'm going about some mending of spades," Talbot returned.

"Are you sure it's not the breaking of hearts?" Stephen laughed back from the fire by which he was sitting. "Well, you'll see Katrine any way. Tell her—"

"My dear fellow," interrupted Talbot, impatiently, "I'm not going to see her. I shall have as much as I can do to be back here before mid-day to-morrow," and he went out before the amazed Stephen could say another word.

"Going down town and not going to see Katrine! why, he must be mad," ejaculated Stephen mentally; "wonder what his own girl's like anyway." Then he tossed himself back on the rug and looked at a little postage-stamp photograph Katrine had given him of herself, which he had stuck on the fly-leaf of his Greek testament.

The following morning, before it was fully light, found Talbot toiling up to the west gulch on foot. He had made an early start, as he wanted to be back before the men began work, and the air hung round one and against one's cheek like a sodden blanket in the dusky dawn. It took him over three hours to make the distance, and when he reached his cabin he felt chilled through. All his muscles were stiff and numb from the long climb. He felt a longing to sit down and rest and get a little warmth kindled in his half-frozen limbs. The first thing that encountered him at the main door, which led into the block composed of his own cabin and the tunnel, was a sheet of smooth ice, only an inch deep perhaps, but glazing over the ground from where he stood to his own door. He saw at once what had happened: the waste water from the workings had been diverted from its proper outlet, and had simply run freely at its own will over the level ground. Talbot's face darkened as his eyes rested on it. It was Marley's business to see that the egress for the water was kept free and unblocked with ice, and only yesterday he had given him orders to attend to it. It was the second or third time he had returned to find the entrance to his own house almost impassable. Crossing over with difficulty the frozen stream, he looked into his cabin. There was about a foot of muddy water and ice covering the floor and floating his slippers and some pairs of socks he had left by the hearth. The fire was out, and the lower part of the stove filled with mud and water. The bed was completely soddened, the blankets and quilt dabbling in the water. He did not go beyond the threshold. After a minute's survey he turned and walked down the tunnel leading to the shaft where he knew the men were working.

"Marley!" he called down the shaft.

"What is it?" came up from below in a surly tone.

"You have allowed the waste to run into the tunnel again, and my cabin is flooded."

"Well, clean it out then!"

"I think that is your business," answered the dry cutting tones from above. "Come up at once, and see to it."

"I'm not going to swab out your blasted, dirty old cabin," shouted Marley hoarsely from the bottom of the shaft. "Do it yourself."

A strange look came over Talbot's quiet face. It whitened and set in the darkness. He knew his men were gathered about Marley, listening to what passed, and this open defiance of his authority, this public insult before them, angered him excessively. He made his answer very quietly, however, only his voice was peculiarly hard, and the words seemed to drop like ice on the men standing listening below.

"I allow no one to speak to me like that here," he said. "This is the last day that you work on the claim."

"I'll work here as long as it suits me," retorted Marley, with an oath. "You can't turn me out."

"We will see about that," returned Talbot, in the same even, frigid tone, and he turned away from the pit and walked back to his flooded cabin.

He found Denbigh had arrived there. It was close to the luncheon hour by this time, and he was doing what he could to get rid of the water. He looked up, and saw at once from the other's face there had been some unusual incident.

"What's up?" he inquired, standing still, with his mop in his hand.

"That fellow Marley is making all the trouble he can," returned Talbot. "I have just told him he has got to get out, that's all."

Denbigh's face fell. "I think it's a bad job," he remarked after a minute. "You know what a desperate devil he is; he would kill you, I believe, if he had to give up his work."

"Well, he has been trying to boss this business for some time now," returned Talbot, "and I am tired of it. To-day he finished with a gross insult before a lot of the men, and it's time, I think, to show him and them who is boss here."

"Couldn't you overlook it?" replied Denbigh, tentatively, with a scared look on his thin face.

"I have no wish to," replied Talbot, coldly. "There is bound to be trouble some time. It may just as well come now as later."

Denbigh opened his mouth to make a further protest, but Talbot stopped him.

"Don't let us discuss it any further, please," he said curtly, and Denbigh closed his mouth and dropped back on his knees to his floor-mopping.

Talbot drew out his pistol, glanced over it, and buckled it round his waist.

When the room was reduced to some appearance of dry comfort again, the two men sat down to their luncheon in silence. Talbot was too excited to swallow a mouthful of the food. Although so calm outwardly, and with such absolute command over his passion, anger was with him, like a flame at white heat, rushing through his veins.

As they sat they heard the miners tramping by the cabin door, and saw their heads pass the window as they went out to get their mid-day food. Denbigh himself, as soon as he had finished, made an excuse and departed. He was eager to join his companions before they came back to work and hear some more delectable details of the row than he could get from Talbot. When all his men had filed out from the tunnel, Talbot went into the passage and walked up to the heavy wooden door and shut it, barring it with a steady hand. This was the main entrance to the shaft, and at the present time the only one. The door was never, under ordinary circumstances, closed, but stood open all day for the men to pass in and out to their work. When he had fastened it he walked back, turned into his own cabin, and took up his place at the window. From here he could see the men as they came back. They began to return earlier than was their wont, knowing that trouble was in the air, and each one was anxious to be on the spot for the crisis. All through the lunch hour Talbot's words and the possibility of Dick Marley being obliged to "quit" was the sole topic of conversation.

Dick talked largely, and with a great many of the miners his oaths, and the imputations of cowardice he heaped on his employer, carried the day. Some of the others, quieter men with keener perceptions, merely listened in silence, and shook their heads when appealed to for an opinion.

"I dunno. He's got grit," remarked one between mouthfuls of bread and bacon, in response to a sanguinary burst of Dick's.

"He's a slip," answered Dick, contemptuously.

"But a dead sure shot."

"He'd funk it," said Dick, his face paling a little. "He'd never stand up to me. He's got no fight in him. Why, he's managed that claim there now for two years and he's never so much as fired a shot over it. Now that fellow Robinson wot's got the claim a mile farther up the creek, he's the boy for me. Why, he hadn't been there two days before there was trouble, and at the end of the week we was reckoning up he had made five corpses over it."

He looked round the circle, and there was a murmur of admiring assent.

The old miner nodded his head slowly as he munched his beans.

"Yes, that's Talbot's way; he's just as smooth as butter as long as you know he's the boss and act accordin', but jest as soon as you begin to try and boss him, you'll know you have your hands full."

Dick took another pull at the tin whisky bottle, and tightened his belt.

As the men returned to their work they were surprised to see their employer leaning idly against his window, and still more surprised when they passed round to the main entrance to find the great door shut. Talbot came himself and let each man in, in turn as they came up, shutting the door afterwards. Their curiosity at this unusual state of things was great, but there was a look on the pale, stern face they encountered on the threshold that froze all open question or comment, and each man went by silently to his work. When they got down towards the shaft and out of hearing, however, their tongues were loosened again.

"'E's waiting for Dick to come back, that's what he is," volunteered one of the miners; "and somehow or other I don't feel jest dying to be in Dick's shoes when he do come."

There was no dissent openly offered to this guarded opinion. Most of the men hung about in the tunnel, and seemed unwilling to quit the scene of the coming contest.

At last, among the final batch of men, Marley came sauntering past the window. Talbot's eyes flashed as the tiger's when the brush crackles. He walked out to the great door and flung it wide open. Dick fell back a step, and the little crowd of miners who accompanied him closed in round the two, open mouthed and eyed, to see the battle.

"You can't come in," and the sentence had an accent of inflexibility that made it seem like a drawn sword across the entrance.

"To hell I can't!" returned Dick, a dull red flush coming over his face.

"No, you can't," Talbot replied in the same calm, incisive way, that contrasted strongly with the coarse, whisky-thickened tone of the other.

"Oh well, I guess I'm coming in any way," answered Marley, and he made a step forward. A slight motion of Talbot's right hand to his belt was his only answer.

Marley stopped, put his own hand, half involuntarily, to his hip, remembered he had no revolver with him, and turned pale and red in confusion.

By this time the loud voices and talking at the door had brought the remainder of the men upon the scene. Those who had already passed into the shaft left their work and came up behind Talbot in the tunnel; those in front pressed a little nearer. Talbot stood now completely surrounded by the crowd of rough working men. Marley's adherents were in full force. He was quite alone. He did not glance round them. He did not think of himself, nor of his own danger should two or three of them back up their fellow and commence to hustle him. He felt nothing but a cool though intensely savage determination to subdue this burly brute, to defend his position and title, though it cost him his life.

"There can be only one boss here," he said coldly, as Marley hesitated before him. "If you are not satisfied who it is, go to your cabin and get your six-shooter, and we will settle it here on the dump."

There was a movement and a murmur of satisfaction amongst the men. Now this was coming down to business and giving them something they could understand. Here was a man willing to defend his rights in a good, square stand-up fight on the spot, and they one and all agreed in their own minds that he was the right sort. They glanced at Dick expectantly, and some said to themselves he weakened. They were not going to take sides with either party. One of the men was their friend and fellow-worker, the other was their employer. The two had a difference, and they could settle it between themselves. They had no business to interfere. All they had to do was to stand round and see a square fight and "with'old their judgment," as they said afterwards, talking it over in the bar of the "Pistol Shot." They waited, and Dick hesitated. He felt his opponent's eyes upon him; he glanced round the men, they were watching him.

"Fetch your six-shooter," commanded Talbot again, with increasing sternness, and Dick, feeling he must do something, nodded sullenly and turned away towards his cabin. He strode up the incline in the direction of the miners' dwellings, and Talbot, whose brain seemed to himself half splitting with nervous, angry excitement, began to pace up and down a short length before the door, waiting for him to come back. He did not order his men away, and they stayed in their places.

The excitement was intense amongst them as they waited; not one of them shifted his place on the log or bank where he had sat down; they hardly seemed to draw their breath. All their eyes were fixed upon Talbot. He walked up and down in front of the door, his arms folded, his revolver still in its case on his hip. The men watched him curiously. His face was very white and exceedingly determined.

The afternoon was placid and lovely. The temperature was not within many degrees of zero, but the gold of the sunshine was bright, and the air dazzlingly clear. It was absolutely still, not a leaf rustled, not a breath stirred. Nature was in her calmest, gentlest mood; nowhere could there have been a more tranquil arena to witness the passions of men. There was perfect silence, except for the crack of the ice sometimes as it split beneath the firm, resolute steps of the man pacing up and down. His face was set as a stone mask, as immovable and as calm, but the passion of anger increased within him as he waited; a mad impatience for his adversary to return grew at each step that he walked to and fro, with the insult of the morning echoing in his ears.

At last he stopped in his walk and fixed his gaze on the road which led to the miners' cabins. All the men's eyes followed his, and they saw the figure of their fellow-worker coming slowly down towards them. A huge, hulking form, contrasting strongly with the slim one of the man waiting for him. Some of the miners glanced up at Talbot, wondering silently if he "funked it," but there was something in that attitude and that iron countenance that reassured them and stirred a dull admiration in their hearts. Talbot ceased to walk up and down. He planted himself directly in front of the wide open door and waited there. Passion and excitement had dilated his pupils until the usually calm light grey eyes looked black; his nostrils quivered slightly as he watched his enemy coming up. As Marley drew nearer, the miners noted with satisfaction his enormous six-shooter swinging in his belt; the sunlight caught the steel at every other step forward he made. Their hearts beat fast with keen anticipation. There would soon be some fine shooting, and one dead man perhaps, or two, for Marley meant business; and as for the other, he looked like the devil himself as he stood there. And he was a fine shot, there was no mistake about that. Denbigh stared hard at him with round fixed eyes. He was thinking of the nights when he had watched Talbot teaching Dick to shoot straight—teaching the very man he had sent off now to get his pistol to shoot himself with! He remembered how Talbot had stood with Marley at this very tunnel's mouth and showed him how to snuff a candle at thirty yards! And Denbigh stared and glowed with admiration. Marley drew nearer down the path, his heavy crunching steps echoing through the serene and frosty air. A few minutes more and he was close upon the eager, expectant, silent circle; the men watched him with their breath suspended. On he came, sullenly, filled with a sort of dogged, brutal animosity against the man he had wronged and insulted. He stepped between the men, who made a short line, and then into the clear open space, facing Talbot.

For the first time he looked him full in the face, with a fugitive, fleeting glance, and his eyes shifted away. His pace slackened, but he did not stop; his feet dragged loosely over the rough snow and gravel, his huge form seemed to shrink together, to lessen; while to the fascinated eyes of the men watching the two, that slight figure at the doorway, motionless as a statue, seemed to dominate the scene. Marley felt a peculiar, sick paralysis stealing over him, a curious tugging back of his muscles when he tried to get his hand to his hip, a strangling feeling in his throat: that glance seemed petrifying him. The absolute fearlessness, the indomitable will that filled it, seemed to overcome him.

The very fact, perhaps, that Talbot had not even yet drawn his pistol, the extreme coolness that relied upon the swiftness of his wrist to draw it at a second's notice, staggered and scared him. He remembered the skill that had long been his admiration, and that he had at last learned to imitate, the sureness of aim and eye, the dexterity and quickness of that hand, and his tongue fairly cleaved to the roof of his dry mouth. He struggled to draw his revolver, but his arm refused to obey his will. Yet it was not wholly cowardice that swept over him in a sickly tide. As he had met those scornful, indignant eyes, there had rushed back to his mind a thousand small benefits conferred upon him by this man, a thousand instances of friendliness, the memory of the first days they had worked together, how he had slept under his roof, fed at his table, how, more than all, he had been given by him and instructed in the use of this very weapon that now would be turned to the giver's own breast. A horror of killing this man, of wounding him, firing upon him, combined with his terror of being killed, swept over him, and between these he felt cowed and beaten, unable to stand up and face him, unable to do anything but drag one trembling foot behind the other and go by, keeping watch from the side of his eye that that deadly pistol was not drawn upon him. But Talbot never moved, simply stood and watched him too, with fixed eyes; and Marley, overwhelmed by some power he did not understand, as if dragged forward against his will, without another look at his opponent, passed by them all and went on slowly down the road leading to the town. Not a word was spoken, not a breath was drawn, no one moved. They watched his retreating figure, some half hoping, half expecting, some half fearing, he would turn and shoot from a distance,—all wondering greatly, and a little overawed. Then, as he neither turned nor looked back, but kept steadily ahead, his large figure well outlined against the stretches of white snow, his six-shooter glistening in the sun, his head hanging down, till at last by a turn in the road he was lost to view, there was a long-drawn breath of surprise and wonder, a general turning of the eyes to Talbot. It was a victory, though a bloodless one, and they felt it. Each one felt that the conqueror was before them. Talbot said nothing. He simply stood aside from the door, to let the miners who were outside enter. The men took it as a signification that they were to recommence work, and hastened to obey. They did not dare to speak to him, not even to congratulate him. They were awed into submissive silence before him. Not a sound was uttered. The men filed silently into the tunnel like cowed sheep into their pen, leaving their master standing motionless in the sunshine.