"When I come to, there was Vahna spread-eagled on top of the
nugget, and the old fellow with a beak jabbering away solemnly as
if going through some sort of religious exercises. In his hand he
had a stone knife--you know, a thin, sharp sliver of some obsidian-
like stuff same as they make arrow-heads out of. I couldn't lift a
hand, being held down, and being too weak besides. And--well,
anyway, that stone knife did for her, and me they didn't even do
the honour of killing there on top their sacred peak. They chucked
me off of it like so much carrion.

"And the buzzards didn't get me either. I can see the moonlight
yet, shining on all those peaks of snow, as I went down. Why, sir,
it was a five-hundred-foot fall, only I didn't make it. I went
into a big snow-drift in a crevice. And when I come to (hours
after I know, for it was full day when I next saw the sun), I found
myself in a regular snow-cave or tunnel caused by the water from
the melting snow running along the ledge. In fact, the stone above
actually overhung just beyond where I first landed. A few feet
more to the side, either way, and I'd almost be going yet. It was
a straight miracle, that's what it was.

"But I paid for it. It was two years and over before I knew what
happened. All I knew was that I was Julian Jones and that I'd been
blacklisted in the big strike, and that I was married to Sarah
here. I mean that. I didn't know anything in between, and when
Sarah tried to talk about it, it gave me pains in the head. I mean
my head was queer, and I knew it was queer.

"And then, sitting on the porch of her father's farmhouse back in
Nebraska one moonlight evening, Sarah came out and put that gold