"I was among the first at Nome and staked alongside the discoverers, who undertook to put me in right for once; but although the fellows around me made fortunes in a day, my ground was barren and my bed-rock swept clean by that unseen hand which I always felt but could never avoid. I leased proven properties, only to find that the pay ceased without reason. I did this so frequently that owners began to refuse me and came to consider me a thing of evil omen. Once a broken snow-shoe in a race to the recorder's office lost me a fortune; at another time a corrupt judge plunged me from certainty to despair, and all the while my time was growing shorter and I was growing poorer. "Two hours after the Topkuk strike was made I drove past the shaft, but the one partner known to me had gone to the cabin to build a fire, and the other one lied to me, thinking I was a stranger. I heard afterward that just as I drove away my friend came to the door and called after me, but the day was bitter, and my ears were muffled with fur, while the dry snow beneath the runners shrieked so that it drowned his cries. Me chased me for half a mile to make me rich, but the hand of fate lashed my dogs faster and faster, while that hellish screeching outdinned his voice. Six hours later Topkuk was history. You've seen stampedes--you understand. "My name became a by-word and caused people to laugh, though they shrank from me, for miners and sailors are equally superstitious. No man ever had more opportunities than I, and no man was ever so miserably unfortunate in missing them. In time I became whipped, utterly without hope. Yet almost from habit I fought on and on, with my ears deaf to the voices that mocked me. "Three years isn't very long as you measure time, but the death-watch drags, and the priest's prayers are an eternity when the hangman waits outside. But the time came and passed at length, and I saw my beautiful breathing dream become a rotting corpse. Still, I struggled along, until one day something snapped and I gave up--for all time. I realized, as you said, that I was 'miscast,' that I had never been of this land, so I was headed for home. Home!" Emerson smiled bitterly. "The word doesn't mean anything to me now, but anyhow I was headed for God's country, an utter failure, in a worse plight than when I came here, when you put this last chance in front of me. It may be another _ignis fatuus_, such as the others I have pursued, for I have been chasing rainbows now for three years, and I suppose I shall go on chasing them; but as long as there is a chance left, I can't quit--I _can't_. And something tells me that I have left that ill-omened thing behind at last, and I am going to win!"