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