"That is the hydraulic flume," he said aloud. "Gold has been stolen there in the past, again and again. Some was stolen two nights ago. _How do I know but that I am the thief?_" Was that what Prendergast had meant by the "easier way"? A shiver ran over him. "How do I know!" he thought. "I can see myself--the evil side of me--when the dark had fallen, waking and active ... I see myself creeping down there, stealing from shadow to shadow, to scoop the gold from the riffles when the moon is under a cloud. I see men sitting from dark to daylight, with loaded rifles across their knees, watching. I see a flash of fire ... I hear a report. I see myself there by the sluice-boxes, dead, shot down in the act of a thief, making good the name men know me by!" The figure of Jessica came before him, standing in her soft white gown, her hand against her cheek and the jasmin odors about her. The dream he had dreamed could not be--never, never, never! All that was left was surrender, ignominious flight to scenes barren of suggestion. To a place where he could work and save and repay! He looked at the slip of bank-paper in his hand. At that instant a shining point caught his eye. It came from the pan of gravel on the doorstep on which the rain had been beating. He thrust the draft into his pocket and seized a double handful of the gravel. He plunged it into a pail of water and held it to the light. It sparkled with coarse, yellow flakes of gold. He dropped the handful with a sharp exclamation, threw on his coat and rushed from the cabin. All day, alone on the fog-soaked hillside, Harry toiled in the trench without food or rest. CHAPTER XXVII INTO THE GOLDEN SUNSET It was a fair, sweet evening, and the room where Jessica sat beside David Stires' bed, reading aloud to him, was flooded with the failing sunlight. The height was still in brightness, but the gulches below were wine-red and on their rims the spruces stood shadow-straight against the golden ivory of the southern sky. Since the old man's seizure in the night he had been much worse and she had scarcely left his room. To-day, however, he had sat propped by pillows, able to read and chat, and the deep personal anxiety that had numbed her had yielded. She was reading now from a life of that poetess whose grave has made a lonely Colorado mountain a place of pilgrimage. She read in a low voice, holding the page to the dimming light: