and passes, only two know that the trail of the great nugget is ended. For Special Constable Connie Morgan of the Royal North-west Mounted Police prefers to speak of other things. And Ick Far, the leathern-faced, the imperturbable, speaks nothing at all, but sits in sphinx-like silence with his eyes fixed upon far things—thinking his own thoughts.
As the June Altroff sheered in toward the Dawson wharf, her stern wheel lashing the waters of the Yukon into white foam, the little knot of men who awaited her arrival were horrified by a dull roar and a sudden high-flung column of smoke and steam, as before their very eyes the little steamer disappeared from sight, leaving the surface of the Yukon strewn with a mass of white wreckage, and the struggling forms of men.
Five minutes later, the police launch Aurora, manned by Sergeant McKeever, Corporal Rickey, and Special Constable Connie Morgan, shot out from the bank and returned with the half-dozen survivors of the wreck.
It was during the investigation which followed, that the great nugget first came under the notice of the Mounted. In the Miners' and Marines' Hos-
