feet on it you follow it again. The thing becomes an obsession; you feel
forced to go."

"Even if you bring nothing back?"

Vane laughed.

"One always brings back something--frost-bite, bruises, a bag of
specimens that assayers and mineral development men smile at. They're
the palpable results, but in most cases you pick up an intangible
something else."

"And that is?"

"A thing beyond definition. A germ that lies in wait in the lonely places
and breeds fantasies when it gets into your blood. Anyway, you can never
quite get rid of it."

Evelyn was interested. The man was endowed with a trick of quaint and
almost poetical imagination, which she had not suspected him of
possessing.

"It conduces to unrest?" she suggested.

"Yes. One feels that there's a rich claim waiting beyond the thick timber
through which one can hardly scramble, across the icy rivers, or over the
snow-line."

"But you found one."