His assailants grappled with him swiftly, and he swayed struggling and hitting out with short blows in the center of a silent, vicious conflict. A rough hard palm was crushed against his mouth, a head ground into his throat, and a heavy, mucous breath of rum smote him. There was muttered cursing, and low, disregarded commands. A cotton handkerchief, evidently used as a mask, tore off in Jason's hand; strained voices, their caution lost in passion, took unmistakably the accents of “Pack” Clower and the Swede, Steven. A thinner tone outside the swirling bodies cried low and urgent, “Get it done with.” A fist was driven again Jason's side, leaving a sharp, stabbing hurt, a heavy kick tore his thigh. Then he got his fingers into a neck and put into the grip all the sinewy strength got by long years with a miner's pan and shovel. A choked sob responded, and blood spread stickily over his palms. It seemed to Jason Burrage that he was shaking himself free, that he was victorious; with a final supreme wrench he stood alone, breathing in gusts. There was a second's imponderable stillness, and then the entire night appeared to crash down upon his head... He thought it was the flumed river, all their summer's labor, bursting over him. He was whirled downward through a swift course of jagged pains, held under the hurtling water and planks and stones. He fought, blind and strangled, but he was soon crushed into a supine nothingness. Far below, the river discharged him: he was lying beside a slaty bank in which the gold glittered like fine and countless fish scales. But he couldn't move, and the bank flattened into a plain under a gloomy ridge, with a camp of miners. He saw that it was Sunday, for the men were all grouped before the tents singing. There was Eddie Lukens gravely waving a hand to the beat of the melody: “'Don't you cry for me. I'm going to Calaveras With my wash bowl on my knee.'” It was undoubtedly Eddie, his partner, but he had never seen him so white and--why, he had a hole over his eye! Eddie Lukens was dead; it wasn't decent for him to be standing up, flapping his hands and singing. Jason bent forward to remonstrate, to persuade him to go back--back to where the dead belonged. Then he remembered, but it was too late: Eddie had him in an iron clutch, he was dragging him, too, down. Jason made a convulsive effort to escape, he threw back his head, gasping; and saw Honora, his wife, bending over him. The tormenting illusion slowly perished--this was Cottarsport and not California, he was back again in the East, the present, married to Honora Canderay. An astounding fact, but so. Through the window of his room he could see the foliage of a great horse-chestnut tree that stood by the side walk; it was swelling into flower. Full memory now flooded back upon him, and with it the realization that probably his happiness was destroyed.