"Alphonse!" she exclaimed, recognizing the once jaunty person of her former courier, alias Count St. Hilaire.
Alphonse, who had not thought of her from that day to this, in turn recognizing her, hastened to attribute his present pitiful plight as the deserved vengeance of an outraged Heaven for his baseness in despoiling one of its own angels of kodak and motorcar. "But," he wept, "zese fruits of sin did not long time 'dure. Ze automobile she bust, zen I bust—and now—I have a such hunger."
In spite of the weight of sadness at her heart, Evelyn could not but smile. It was one of the jests of the great powers—jests that are, nevertheless, always tinged with irony, this confronting her with the scarecrow of her whilom splendor at the supreme hour of her misery.
Grateful for food which he devoured eagerly, overwhelmed by the gift of a small sum she bestowed on him to enable him to prosecute his journey, Alphonse sought some expression of his feelings beyond his mere copious Gallic thanks. He was selling photographs for a living, and he besought mademoiselle, could she bring herself to overlook the regrettable fact that they were the product of her own camera, to accept the choicest example of his art—a veritable triumph, an arc-en-ciel—a rainbow!
Involuntarily, Evelyn shuddered at the word. Would the gods never cease their mocking sport, she wondered, even while with becoming graciousness she thanked Alphonse and sent him on his way, rejoicing. She still held the picture in her hand, carelessly, occupied with her thoughts, when she heard a cry from Durant, who had come out without her noticing him, and was looking over her shoulder.
"My God! Evelyn! Look," he cried. "The mine—The Rainbow!"
"Father, dear," she sought to soothe him, "it is nothing—merely a chance photograph."
"Nothing? It is my witness, my record," answered Durant. "No, Evie, I'm not mad. This clears away the last cloud. Examine it carefully." Getting out his prospector's glass, he polished the lens carefully and held it over the photograph.
Evelyn looked, as she was bidden, at first merely to humor him, then with awakening interest as, under the glass's magnifying power, she studied the picture in detail. In his passion for the picturesque Alphonse had, indeed, put her camera to good use. In this composition he had caught a striking moment: Durant himself, in his rough miner's garb, standing with arms flung up, as if in thankfulness to Heaven, while near by, beside a half-uprooted willow-bush, knelt Walter Pierce with an expression of wonder on his young face; while in the background, beyond the creek, stood the imperturbable mountains, spanned by a faint, elusive rainbow.
"This is the very spot!" Durant laughed like a happy boy. "Lost Shoe Creek! Fancy forgetting even the name!—I had always believed in it, though every other miner turned it down. It had shared the fate of hundreds of other northern camps: a new strike; a stampede, prospectors, traders, grafters, from all quarters rushing madly in; then, disappointment, failure, starvation, desertion to new fields. It became the most god-forsaken place on earth—an abandoned camp drained of everything but the dregs of its population. I alone held on, having a nose for gold, and scenting it right here, and now and then coming on indications: Blenksoe, Raish, and all the other grafters meanwhile dogging my steps to profit by any strike I might make, jump my claim, and make away with me!—Oh, this brings it all back, this picture: Walter Pierce; your coming; how Nick and the boys covered up my humiliation; my trying to kill myself; and then—the gold!"