The Carlisle independent., 1917-08-09

upon corner of the room. There was the strange apparition which had haunted him, no hallucination now, he could swear. He had never expected to see il again. It burned itself upon his eyebalIs. that vision of the flaming eyes and the two dead-white hands beneath them.
 One of the hands raised itself and traced the letters of a word upon the air in luminous letters that tiickered, wayered and disappeared.
 Confess. '" was written there.
 With q groan Sebastian dropped into a chair and put his hands across his face.
 When at last he looked up. the vision had vanished.
 
 There were quite a few things that Mir. Louis Lamb knew. He knew his name. and also his nickname. "One Lamp Louie,n which had followed him to Whites Village, Western Canada. in the way that nicknames do. He knew that he was prospecting for gold. and
 
 population drawn to that place by the uneovering of gold deposits following upon an earthquake. He knew that he had properly staked out claim, and that he lived in little shack near by, remote from the village.
 He knew that scar ran along the top of his head, and he surmised that 1.N, l.. < s.. or brawl. But beyond these elemen- tary facts his mind was extremely hazy about his past.
 The simple cause of his forgetfulness was not absence of mind, in it's ordi- nary aspect, but the fact that he had been struck across the head by fall ing beam in the cabaret fire.
 How MT. Lamb had made his way to Western Canada and engaged in the prospecting profession, how he had managed to build up some sort of CO., herent personality out of the remnants that were left uninjured is a matter for neurologists to explain. Suffice it that at a certain moment he found him. self staring with unusual interest into the debris of a pan of earth and pebbles. which he had washed with water from a mountain stream.
 In the bottom of this, in place of the few canary-colored flakes that he had expected to find, were three nuggets the size of lima beans, lying in little mound of gold dust.
 Louis Lamb emptied them into the little bag of dust which he wore about his body. Then he seooped up another painful of debris and started to wash it too. But no washing was needed. Nuggets of several shapes and sizes were lying in it. And nuggets of va- rious shapes and sizes lay in the gravel at his feet.
 There was 10 possibility of mistak- ing what had happened. The recent seismic disturbances had uncovered an alluvial deposit washed down through the course of ages by the streams from the great lode somewhere in the noun tain side.
 Louie had staked off this angle of the river bed, just where the torrent, sweeping past, had deposited it's wealth, the heavier gold, leaving the pebbles to strew themselves anywhere along the rivers further course.
 After the first shock of the discov- cry had passed, he looked cautiously about him. Nobody was near. Nobody wanted to spy upon his claim, which was supposed to be worthless.
 He worked with intense secrecy for weeks. always increasing his store of gold. which he concealed in hole dug in the ground beneath the plank floor of his cabin. Then, somehow, the se- cret became common property.
 It was impossible for Louie to keep it in such a place as Whites Village. Besides. other strikes had been made. The whole side of the disrupted noun tain teemed with gold
 Red" Finn was interested in the hermits mysterious journeys to and fro between his hut and his claim. Red" had felt" the presence of mon- ey in Whites Village. He had gone to investigate, and, after satisfying him. self that the bees were gathering in store for him, he summoned two or three of his colleagues at present hid ing in various remote villages from the inQuisitiyeness of the Northwest mounted police.
 When they arrived, Red pointed out Louie's shack and indicated that there was probably fortune inside it.
 The hoard had increased to a veri- table fortune when one evening Louie decided to go downtown. He had his provisions to purchase; but the in- stinct which had sent him there took him to the railroad depot instead of to the store. On the platform, waiting for the train to come in, stood tall, well-dressed, athletic man, with gray ish hair and strange look of mystery upon his face.
 "Well, MT. Lamb, this is pleasure"