Roy Norton

“ I clutched it with my hand, and gasped. The stars above had sharpened to leering, penetrating lights of mockery. The very trees of the forest behind seemed leaning forward to jeer at my distress. Life itself was an illusion, bitter and cynical!
I turned and staggered away down the trail, and that I stepped repeatedly from it and into the chilling drifts now gave me no thought, for I was miserable, and hope and ambition seemed to have been killed in one swift, unmistakable discovery. Elizabeth Wilton would never be more to me than a friend, and the youth and brilliancy of Kentuck had won. ”

“ It was gruesome to remember that but a minute before a man, a strong man, in the flush of life, had stood there, and then deliberately chosen it as his resting place! The stars shone as they had in that minute before, and the river's surface was as white, and off on the bank the lights of the cabins glowed, and the fire of the cabin that he had fitted for his bride burned higher and higher, as if it were a funeral pyre.
“He's gone, all right!” some one said, and we turned back toward the camp. ”

“ It seemed to me, standing there by his side in the dimness of the trading post, that all the world, that world outside, depended on money—on the gold that we dug from the earth. His very helplessness, his inability to even send them a word of encouragement, the months of anxiety he must endure until he could know how they had fared, and what had become of them, were appalling. ”