out of our minds. We had been companions for nearly two years; and in that time the man's mental outlook had grown to our own level, while in vigour of brain and acuteness of perception he seemed our superior. As we owed fortune to his vigilance to observe and to gather information, to say nothing of the miner's flair, that curious instinct, which seems to excel the power of the scientific geologist, so we owed much of our happiness in the Arctic wilderness to his courage and patience in difficulty, his unwavering cheerfulness in deprivation and disaster.

"He was the best of us all," Stormont said, on the bitter night when Mackenzie told us the end was near, and when we two left the hut together, shrinking from the agony of those final hours.

Alas, old friend, you know how tragic the passage from life to clay is to the man who can see no light beyond that dread moment when the last sigh leaves the ashen lips.

It was at the beginning of March, our second winter in that polar region. The frozen lakes gave no promise of a coming spring; the ironbound soil in which we worked needed continuous fires to combat the frost, and strenuous effort and dogged persistence; but we had laboured patiently through the worst part of our second winter, with a result that far surpassed even Stormont's expectations; and we meant to continue working to the end of May, and to start upon our return journey by lake and river early in June.

In many a long talk round the log-fire we had debated the use we should make of our treasure when we got back to civilization.

Stormont's fortune was pre-engaged, and was to be invested in the Jamford Grain Company. Mackenzie meant to establish himself in Harley Street, the youngest consulting physician in the neighbourhood, since with an income which few doctors achieve at the end of a distinguished career, he could afford to wait for patients, and to devote himself to scientific research. For myself wealth could suggest no scheme of personal happiness, and even philanthropy could not interest me, unaided by Rachel.

Michael was the most jubilant among us, for in his three hundred thousand pounds-reckoned roughly, and

considerably under-estimated-he saw the means of carrying out some of his Utopian ideas.

He told us how he meant to travel all over Europe, taking with him a little knot of working men, selected for their intelligence, and power of appreciating natural beauty and the wonders of art. With these companions, shifting them every three or four months, he meant to see all that the world contains of interest or delight; extending his travels as the years went on to the four quarters of the earth, and to every island of picturesque charm, but never a solitary traveller; always carrying with him companions of his own class, labouring men, his inferiors in education, but capable of improvement, and eager to improve.

"And some tropical night, when you are sitting under a palm tree, reading Omar Kayyam to them, one of the chosen band will stab you in the back, for the sake of your wallet of travelling-money, and the others will go shares with him in the plunder, and help him to scrape a grave in the sand," said Stormont.

We all made mock of his optimistic schemes; but nothing could shake him in his conviction that his fortune was a thing to be held in trust for his fellow-men.

Well, those dreams seemed to have come to a sudden close. Our friend and fellow-labourer was dying. Mackenzie had told us in the saddest words that all hope was over. The last sands were running slowly through the glass, the grey shadow with the scythe stood by the pillow, where the doctor watched in a dumb patience, waiting for that which seemed the inevitable end.

Stormont and I wandered far, in our silent tramp along the frost-bound shore, with eyes that stared absently at the narrow stream forcing its way between wide banks of ice, and with hearts as heavy as lead. We seldom spoke to each other; and when we broke the melancholy silence it was only to speak of the man we had left dying, and whom we talked of already in a past tense, as if he were dead.

"What a fellow he was," said Stormont; "strong as a lion, and true as steel,"

We had been tramping for nearly two hours under the cold brilliancy of these northern stars, when I was seized with a sudden eagerness to go back to the hut, and began

to hate myself for the cowardly dread that had made me shun those last hours of unconsciousness, those hours in which, though he still lived, we knew he was no longer with us.

"I must grasp his hand once more, for the last time," I told Stormont, "though he will not know."

"Don't hurry. It's waste of power," Stormont answered. "He must have gone ever so long ago. Mack only gave him an hour. Life was ebbing fast."

I did not slacken my pace, but went along the backward track almost at a run. I hated myself for having fled from

my friend's death-bed.

What if a flash of light had come at the last, and he had looked about him with recovered consciousness, seeking the faces of his friends, and had found only one of the three -only the doctor, with his professional interest in death? What would he have thought of us? How might that great strong heart have been wounded by a desertion that would seem like indifference?

The return took a long time, for we had walked far in our agitation, and I was dead beat when I got back to the hut.

I stood on the threshold of the room which we had made into a hospital, dreading to see the rigid outline of a marble form under a sheet; but, to my infinite relief, I saw Mackenzie kneeling beside the bed, and holding the sick man's wrist, with head bent and close attention.

I sank on to the rough bench by the wall, exhausted by the hurried pace at which I had walked the last mile, leaving Stormont to follow me at his own steady tramp.

Mackenzie was watching his patient too intently to look up as I entered the hut.

"The end has not come?” I said.

"No, this is not the end. It is more like the beginning," he answered, in a low voice, still looking up.

I was thunderstruck, and my heart beat with a sudden hope. I asked him if he saw a chance of his patient's recovery.

"An hour ago he was sinking," Mackenzie answered. “I measured his life by moments; the pulse was the thinnest thread, which I could scarcely feel under my fingers. I had

heard the death-rattle in his throat. I had seen every sign of dissolution, and I was prepared for the end. I was worn out with watching, and as I sat beside him, with my fingers on his wrist, in those moments which I thought his last, waiting to close his eyes, I may have dozed a little, the sort of half-sleep that comes from a tired brain. I had taken care to keep the fire going strong; but in that hour an icy blast had crept into the hut, and I started out of that short lapse of attention, frozen to the marrow. I have never, even in our Arctic weather, felt so fierce a grip of the cold. My hand had dropped from Mike's wrist, as I dozed, and I started awake, fully prepared to find lifeless clay lying on this bed. I thought his pulse had stopped for ever, and I found it beating strong and fast. His eyes looked at me with lightning in them. The life that had been so near extinction flamed up in him like a raging fire. I gave him a strong stimulant, but it seemed hardly needed. His pulse beat as no man's pulse that had been so near death ever beat within my experience; and it has been strong and steady ever since."

"It is a wonderful recovery," I said, thrilled with gladness at the strange news.

"It is a resurrection. It has made me think of Lazarus, coming out of the darkness in his grave-clothes. I tell you, Arden, this thing is little short of a miracle."

He spoke in a low voice, but he was greatly excited. I told him that I was hardly surprised, knowing the physical power, the exceptional vitality of the man.

"Yes, it is vitality," he said; "some electrical force that is beyond my diagnosis. Physical power was worn out, the lungs are badly damaged; but there must be some force of will, some hidden spring in the life of the man, that I cannot understand."

He seemed agitated, perplexed by so mysterious a recovery. He is a young man of keen intelligence, loving his profession ardently, an enthusiast in the search for truth, and for the further development of medical science. Often and often since that night of wonder he has recurred to the subject, and always with the same air of perplexity, and even distress, as if the wonder of the thing preyed upon his mind.

For my own part, till Michael was about again, after an

interval of three weeks, during which Mackenzie insisted upon keeping him in a state of absolute quiescence, building up the shattered frame with unwavering care, till our lives resumed our former course, and Michael and I became again comrades, working shoulder to shoulder in the day's labour, I had no feeling but gladness. The man I had liked and esteemed, the trusted companion who had helped me to forget my sorrows and to amass a fortune, that must needs make for usefulness and comfort, this man had been snatched from the jaws of death and given back to me, when I had thought him vanished out of my life for ever. How could I be otherwise than glad?

Yet, after we had been together for little more than a week, that gladness had given place to a strange feeling of distrust, of something that was almost horror. I felt uneasy in the man's company; his voice jarred my nerves, that full strong voice, with its north-country accent, that I had once liked; his face, in which no feature was altered, had undergone a subtle change of expression which made it not the same face. I looked at him and studied his countenance line by line, with a deliberate scrutiny. All the familiar lines were there, but the countenance repelled me. I began to make excuses for keeping aloof from my old comrade. I questioned Stormont, who owned that he too thought Michael had grown dull and heavy since his illness. I questioned Mackenzie, but could get no explanation from him. He repeated that the man's recovery was almost a miracle, and that he could not pretend to explain the fact.

Well, we worked together, we four comrades, and added day by day to our pile of treasure, knowing that the vein we had struck was almost inexhaustible, and that when our time came to leave the Yukon basin, we should sell our claims for a sum that would be in itself a fortune. Our luck was known at Dawson City and at Forty Mile Camp, and we had plenty of offers for the claims.

As time went on, I became conscious of other changes in Michael Dartnell's character-changes always for the worse. Hitherto, while working with indomitable energy, he had never shown the greed of gain. He had piled up his fortune almost unawares, moved by the spirit of adventure, and the desire to excel, rather than by the thirst for gold; and the