"I had left two trails leading from that point, the one towards his hut and back again, the other into the bush to where my dogs were tethered. If he was determined to follow up the latter and to trace me to my hiding, I was ready for him, and would have the advantage of knowing his whereabouts, whilst he was ignorant of mine. He must have been going through some such argument himself, for presently he whipped up his dogs and, with one last glance across his shoulder, continued on his journey. When he had vanished, and I had made certain that he did not intend to return, I went forward to inspect his abandoned camp.
"Inside the hut I found that the floor was of earth and below the snow-level, making evident the fact that it had been erected before the winter had commenced. When I examined the walls, which were constructed of boughs and mud, I came to the conclusion that they had been standing for many years, but had been renewed from time to time. All this made it clear to me that you had been mistaken in saying that the Forbidden River had never been travelled. The next thing to discover was what had brought the old man up there. The earth of the floor was not packed together, but looked loose and rough, as though it had been newly dug. This gave me my first clue to the secret. When I walked above it, it did not sound solid, so I commenced to scrape away the earth. Six inches down I came to branches of trees spread crosswise, as though to form a roof to a cellar. Pulling these aside, after another hour of labour, I looked down into a pit which had been hollowed out. It was getting dark now, so I lit a fire.
"I climbed into the pit, by some rudely fashioned stairs which had been shaped in the side of the wall, and soon found myself on level footing. Groping about down there, I could feel that the sides were tunnelled, and had been roughly timbered with the stems of trees. Going above ground, I fetched a torch and then saw all that I had commenced to suspect--and a good deal more.
"Piled up in one corner was an outfit of miner's implements, pans, axes, spades, picks, etc., and close beside them was a sack of moose-hide. Whipping out my knife, I cut through the thongs by which the sack was tied; it lurched over, letting fall a dozen ounces or so of gold dust. On searching round, I found in another corner a second sack containing nuggets. When I went about the walls, and pushed my way into some of the tunnels, I was made certain that I was in one of the richest placer-mines that I had ever set eyes on. Then I went up to consider what all this meant.