It was a vague, haunting look that always
brought back the one great tragedy of his life--a tragedy he was
even now working night and day at his chosen profession to obliterate
from his memory, lest he should be forever unmanned--forever a prey
to melancholy.
He was still a young man, but when little more than a boy he had
married, and for two years was transcendently happy. Then came the
cry of "Kootenay Gold" ringing throughout Canada--of the untold
wealth of Kootenay mines. Like thousands of others he followed the
beckoning of that yellow finger, taking his young wife and baby
daughter West with him. The little town of Nelson, crouching on its
beautiful hills, its feet laved by the waters of Kootenay Lake, was
then in its first robust, active infancy. Here he settled, going
out alone on long prospecting expeditions; sometimes he was away a
week, sometimes a month, with the lure of the gold forever in his
veins, but the laughter of his child, the love of his wife, forever
in his heart. Then--the day of that awful home-coming! For three
weeks the fascination of searching for the golden pay-streak had
held him in the mountains. No one could find him when it happened,
and now all they could tell him was the story of an upturned canoe
found drifting on the lake, of a woman's light summer shawl caught
in the thwarts, of a child's little silken bonnet washed ashore.
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