The ice was loose and broken. We were all ready to start in a few days. The mighty camp was in a ferment of excitement. Every one seemed elated beyond words. On, once more, to Eldorado!
It was near midnight, but the sky, where the sun had dipped below the mountain rim, was a sea of translucent green, weirdly and wildly harmonious with the desolation of the land. On the bleak lake one could hear the lap of waves, while the high, rocky shore to the left was a black wall of shadow. I stood by the beach near our boat, all alone in the wan light, and tried to think calmly of the strange things that had happened to me.
Surely there was something of Romance left in this old world yet if one would only go to seek it. Here I was, sun-browned, strong, healthy, having come through many trials and still on the edge of adventure, when I might, but for my own headstrong perversity, have yet been vegetating on the hills of Glengyle. A great exultation welled up in me, the voice of youth and ambition, the lust to conquer. I would succeed, I would wrest from the vast, lonely, mysterious North some of its treasure. I would be a conqueror.
Silent and abstracted, I looked into the brooding disk of sheeny sky, my eyes dream-troubled.
Then I felt a ghostly hand touch my arm, and with a great start of surprise, I turned.
"Berna!"
CHAPTER XI
The girl was wearing a thin black shawl around her shoulders, but in the icy wind blowing from the lake, she trembled like a wand. Her face was pale, waxen, almost spiritual in its expression, and she looked at me with just the most pitiably sweet smile in the world.
"I'm sorry I startled you; but I wanted to thank you for your letter and for your sympathy."