And Hazel was in a gleeful mood over
the fact that she had unearthed a big nugget by herself. Beginner's
luck, Bill said teasingly, but that did not diminish her elation. The
old, adventurous glamour, which the long winter and moods of depression
had worn threadbare, began to cast its pleasant spell over her again.
The fascination of the gold hunt gripped her. Not for the stuff
itself, but for what it would get. She wondered if the men who dared
the impassive solitudes of the North for weary, lonesome years saw in
every morsel of the gold they found a picture of what that gold would
buy them in kindlier lands. And some never found any, never won the
stake that would justify the gamble. It was a gamble, in a sense--a
pure game of chance; but a game that took strength, and nerve, a sturdy
soul, to play.
Still, the gold was there, locked up in divers storing places in the
lap of the earth, awaiting those virile enough to find and take. And
out beyond, in the crowded places of the earth, were innumerable
gateways to comfort and pleasure which could be opened with gold. It
remained only to balance the one against the other. Just as she had
often planned according to her opportunities when she was a wage slave
in the office of Bush and Company, so now did she plan for the future
on a broader scale, now that the North promised to open its treasure
vault to them--an attitude which Bill Wagstaff encouraged and abetted
in his own whimsical fashion.
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