The atmosphere of the place changed with his coming. He seemed
to fill it with his tremendous vitality. Men who entered from
the street felt it immediately, and in response to their queries
the barkeepers nodded at the back room, and said comprehensively,
"Burning Daylight's on the tear." And the men who entered
remained, and kept the barkeepers busy. The gamblers took heart
of life, and soon the tables were filled, the click of chips and
whir of the roulette-ball rising monotonously and imperiously
above the hoarse rumble of men's voices and their oaths and heavy
laughs.

Few men knew Elam Harnish by any other name than Burning
Daylight, the name which had been given him in the early days in
the land because of his habit of routing his comrades out of
their blankets with the complaint that daylight was burning. Of
the pioneers in that far Arctic wilderness, where all men were
pioneers, he was reckoned among the oldest. Men like Al Mayo and
Jack McQuestion antedated him; but they had entered the land by
crossing the Rockies from the Hudson Bay country to the east.
He, however, had been the pioneer over the Chilcoot and Chilcat
passes. In the spring of 1883, twelve years before, a stripling
of eighteen, he had crossed over the Chilcoot with five comrades.

In the fall he had crossed back with one. Four had perished by
mischance in the bleak, uncharted vastness. And for twelve years
Elam Harnish had continued to grope for gold among the shadows of
the Circle.

And no man had groped so obstinately nor so enduringly. He had