prefigured by it was realized. But it was always in frank and open
comradeship.

And there was much to cause her to smile as she hurried through the
crowd, across the sand-spit, and over the flat towards the log-building
she had pointed out to Mr. Thurston. Time had rolled back, and
locomotion and transportation were once again in the most primitive
stages. Men who had never carried more than parcels in all their lives
had now become bearers of burdens. They no longer walked upright under
the sun, but stooped the body forward and bowed the head to the earth.
Every back had become a pack-saddle, and the strap-galls were beginning
to form. They staggered beneath the unwonted effort, and legs became
drunken with weariness and titubated in divers directions till the
sunlight darkened and bearer and burden fell by the way. Other men,
exulting secretly, piled their goods on two-wheeled go-carts and pulled
out blithely enough, only to stall at the first spot where the great
round boulders invaded the trail. Whereat they generalized anew upon
the principles of Alaskan travel, discarded the go-cart, or trundled it
back to the beach and sold it at fabulous price to the last man landed.
Tenderfeet, with ten pounds of Colt's revolvers, cartridges, and
hunting-knives belted about them, wandered valiantly up the trail, and
crept back softly, shedding revolvers, cartridges, and knives in
despairing showers. And so, in gasping and bitter sweat, these sons of
Adam suffered for Adam's sin.

Frona felt vaguely disturbed by this great throbbing rush of gold-mad
men, and the old scene with its clustering associations seemed blotted
out by these toiling aliens. Even the old landmarks appeared strangely
unfamiliar. It was the same, yet not the same. Here, on the grassy
flat, where she had played as a child and shrunk back at the sound of