They were a happy family--the Gordon’s. Simple and God-fearing in their belief, and simple and contented in their manner of life. For them the semi-nomadic life of the Northland was no hardship. It was merely the accepted fact of a normal existence. When the luck of the early Dawson days piled up a small surplus of dust, they accepted their good fortune with unboastful equanimity, and later when the claim petered out, and the high prices drained their little surplus, they accepted the reverse of fortune with philosophic stoicism. As their daily lives were sternly ordered by the vicissitudes of a stern land so was their religion a stern and unflexible code of laws. The much thumbed Bible that Gordon read daily was the dictated word of God, and as such was to be believed literally, word for word. The code of law set down in the Gude Book was the code of law subscribed and authorized by God. Any act not in accordance with this code was therefore sanctioned and authorized by the devil. Gordon feared God, and hated the devil. Yet, such was the austere honesty engendered by this implicit belief in his austere code, that had necessity compelled him to have had any dealing with the devil, he would punctiliously have rendered the gentleman of darkness his due, even to the uttermost farthing. For it was his pride, and the pride of his wife, and the inborn pride of his daughter that they owed no man. At least, this had been their pride up to the moment that Camillo Bill told him that MacShane had salted the gold he had won at cribbage into the gravel at the bottom of the shaft. From that moment Gordon knew, and his wife knew, and in a vague sort of way, the little Lou sensed, that no more could they say they owed no man. Not that they considered themselves debtors to MacShane in the sum of the thirty-seven hundred dollars which he had won, and had seen fit to return. The dust was his to do with as he pleased, and the fact that he had pleased to return it to its original owner created no obligation on the part of that owner. No, it was no money debt--this debt that the house of Gordon owed to Burr MacShane. It was a moral debt. When Gordon had denounced MacShane, as he rose from the card table and refused to continue the play, he had honestly believed that MacShane was deliberately refusing him the chance to win back, “earn back,” as Gordon would have it, the money he had risked in an honest endeavour to show that same MacShane the error of his ways. When Camillo Bill’s explanation of the sudden wealth he had found at the bottom of his shaft, had convinced him of MacShane’s honesty in his refusal to continue the game, and his subsequent generosity in the disposal of the dust, even in the face of public denunciation and insult--from that moment Gordon found himself obsessed by a sense of debt. He owed MacShane an apology. And until he should meet MacShane and offer that apology, he was MacShane’s debtor.