Ralph followed Philippe and Kitty through the narrow cleft in the rock, and the three of them stood huddled together at the bottom of the hole. The opening was like an eye looking down on them. Philippe sent Kitty aloft by means of the pine trunk. Looking at Ralph, he scratched his head in perplexity. How to get him out with his arms bound was the question.

"Untie me," said Ralph mildly. "I'll let you tie me again."

This sudden tractibility aroused Philippe's suspicions. He debated the matter scowlingly. However, Ralph, deprived of the use of his right arm, was not a formidable antagonist, and the half-breed decided to chance it. As Ralph climbed, he followed close at his heels, and quickly secured him again at the top.

They made their way down the bed of the ravine. No more than Philippe could Kitty understand the new light in Ralph's eyes. She glanced at him covertly, wondering with a fresh pang of jealousy what had taken place behind her back. Ralph was walking on air. He had suffered so much that he snatched at the prospect of happiness, however fleeting. Both the immediate danger and the hopeless future were put out of his mind; it was enough for him that Nahnya had promised to come to him; she was one to keep her word!

Jim Sholto saw them coming, and ran down the bank to embrace his daughter. Kitty's answering welcome was not overwarm; she was too bitterly concerned with another matter. Jim, hurt by her coldness and ascribing it to its cause, turned angrily on Ralph.

"You young blackguard!" he cried. "You'll stoop to use a helpless girl to further your evil ends, will you?"

Poor Kitty, all day the helpless plaything of circumstances, asserted herself at last. She forced herself between the two men. "If you abuse him any more I shall hate you!" she cried to her father, with an outbreak of passion that surprised herself. "It was not his fault at all! I set him loose of my own free will, out of common humanity, which you lacked! He sent me back, but I would not let him go alone in such a state! I keep telling you it's Annie Crossfox he's in love with. He has made no pretences to me!"

"Where's your pride, lass?" cried Jim.

"It's you who won't let me have any pride!" she flashed back at him. "Never speak of this again!"

He took her arm. "Come away!" he said grimly.

At the top of the bank they met Joe Mixer. "You've got him!" he cried gleefully to Philippe. To Ralph: "You ——! How do you feel about it now?"

Kitty, apprehending blows to follow, wrenched her arm out of her father's grasp, and turned on Joe. The flames still burned high in her cheeks. "Let him alone!" she cried. "He's not your prisoner!" To her father she said passionately: "He was sent out in your care! If you don't take him and keep him from this cowardly bully, you won't take me!"

All men dread a roused woman. "Softly with your epithets, girl!" said Jim scowling. To Philippe he said sullenly: "Give him over to me."

Philippe yielded his prisoner, nothing loath. Joe Mixer, keen to learn what the half-breed had discovered, did not care what became of Ralph. Stack and Crusoe had joined the group, and the three of them volleyed questions at Philippe. Jim Sholto lingered to listen; he was a gold-hunter, too. Ralph, forgotten for the moment by all the men, sat down beside the trail and hugged his dream, deaf and blind to what was going on around him. Kitty watched him sorely.

"It was just like she told," Philippe said; "a long walk through the cave, and a pretty valley on the other side. There is no other way to get in. It is Bowl of the Mountains, all right."

"Did you see any gold?" demanded Joe.

"Plenty," said Philippe. "The bottom of all the little streams are yellow with it. I pick up a little. See!"

Digging his hand into his pocket, he brought it forth full of yellow grains, which he emptied carelessly into Joe's twitching palm. The heads of the four white men came together, and the four pairs of eyes showed the same insane glitter.

"This is the stuff!" cried Joe, pouring the grains with a voluptuous pleasure from palm to palm. "Sweeter than booze! sweeter than women! It'll buy you plenty of both! Gad! I'll keep a great chest of it always by me, and come dig in it every day for the pleasure of the feel and the heft of it!"

"Can we get it out through the cave?" asked Jim.

"Sure!" said Philippe. "It's easy going."

"How about the girl?" demanded Joe.

"She is there with her family."

"How many?"

"An old man, a young man, two boys, and four women."

"H'm! They could make it awkward for us," said Joe frowning.

"They not care for gold," said Philippe, with an innocent, stolid air. "Wash a little, and let it lie. When I tell Nahnya you all here, him feel bad. Him say no use. Him say not fight you."

"Come on, then!" cried Joe excitedly. "Let's lose no time!"

"Come on!" echoed Stack and Crusoe Campbell. The desire was no less strong in Jim Sholto's face. He looked at Kitty uneasily.

Philippe hung back. "I paddle half the night!" he said, with an admirable assumption of the disgruntled servant. "I walk all day. Am I a steam-engine? I got eat and sleep now."

"Sleep?" cried Joe. "Man, there's a fortune waiting for every one of us in there!"

"I got sleep, me," Philippe repeated stubbornly. "The gold is there to-morrow just the same, I guess."

"Damn these redskins!" cried Joe. "They're all alike!"

"Go yourself," said Philippe. "The way is free. Don' blame me if you fall in the hole, or get lost."

A heated argument resulted. Philippe was inexorable. He knew well enough that the white men would not venture into the bowels of the earth without him. Philippe finally picked up his blanket, and carrying it apart lay down and affected to go to sleep. The others were obliged to resign themselves to wait.

Meanwhile Jim Sholto was in a quandary. He could not bear to have Kitty camping with that rough crew, and he was jealous of leaving her a moment alone with Ralph, yet he could not tear himself away from the vicinity with such riches waiting to be gathered. He could not but compare the ease of washing gold in a stream with the strenuous labour of smelting ore in little home-made furnaces.

He compromised with himself by establishing his camp a few hundred yards away from Joe's. It was the spot where the operation had been performed on old Marya's arm. Ralph was secretly gladdened by the choice of the spot. It was not far for Nahnya to come. During the rest of the afternoon Ralph and Kitty slept. Jim occupied himself in building a shelter of branches to house Kitty throughout the night.

There was not much conversation around this campfire. It irked Ralph to be obliged to accept Jim's grim hospitality, but there was no help for it. Immediately after supper Kitty disappeared within her shelter, and Jim soon lay down in his blanket athwart the entrance. He made no objection to Ralph's dragging his bed to a little distance. If Ralph had escaped altogether, Jim would have been only too well pleased.

When Jim's snores began to displace the heavy stillness of the forest, Ralph rose and dragged his blankets still farther away. Jim had tied him in such a manner that his left arm was free from the elbow. He arranged his bed after a fashion directly in the trail, and lay down to wait. It was about nine o'clock. It would not be dark until after ten. He knew that Nahnya could not venture out of the cave until then, and that he must give her time to make a detour of the other camp.

He lay in a kind of fever watching for evidences of darkness with avid eyes. One cannot measure the subtle stages of the passing of day any better than its coming. It goes and it comes and all is said. Thus to Ralph counting the crawling minutes it seemed ............