'So I drifted, like those little fish which raise a sail to the
wind but cannot steer. But my eyes and my ears were open always,
and I went among men who traveled much, for I knew they had but
to see those I sought to remember. At last there came a man,
fresh from the mountains, with pieces of rock in which the free
gold stood to the size of peas, and he had heard, he had met, he
knew them. They were rich, he said, and lived in the place where
they drew the gold from the ground.
'It was in a wild country, and very far away; but in time I came
to the camp, hidden between the mountains, where men worked night
and day, out of the sight of the sun. Yet the time was not come.
I listened to the talk of the people. He had gone away--they had
gone away--to England, it was said, in the matter of bringing men
with much money together to form companies. I saw the house they
had lived in; more like a palace, such as one sees in the old
countries. In the nighttime I crept in through a window that I
might see in what manner he treated her. I went from room to
room, and in such way thought kings and queens must live, it was
all so very good. And they all said he treated her like a queen,
and many marveled as to what breed of woman she was for there was
other blood in her veins, and she was different from the women of
Akatan, and no one knew her for what she was.
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