The town was hidden. They
heard no sound from it. And looking up the great Saskatchewan, the
river of mystery, of romance, of glamour, they saw before them, where
the spruce walls seemed to meet, the wide-open door through which they
might pass into the western land beyond. Keith pointed it out. And he
pointed out the yellow bars, the glistening shores of sand, and told
her how even as far as this, a thousand miles by river--those sands
brought gold with them from the mountains, the gold whose
treasure-house no man had ever found, and which must be hidden up there
somewhere near the river's end. His dream, like Duggan's, had been to
find it. Now they would search for it together.
Slowly he was picking his way so that at last they came to the bit of
cleared timber in which was his old home. His heart choked him as they
drew near. There was an uncomfortable tightness in his breath. The
timber was no longer "clear." In four years younger generations of life
had sprung up among the trees, and the place was jungle-ridden. They
were within a few yards of the house before Mary Josephine saw it, and
then she stopped suddenly with a little gasp. For this that she faced
was not desertion, was not mere neglect.
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