noon
He was staring at the rapids , and it seemed that as he stared he set up some mysterious communication that linked his own force and determination with their irresistible sweep . On the way back Elsie was very silent and it came upon Belding with dull insistency that whatever attraction he had hoped to have for the girl had been merged in the fact that , for the present at any rate , he was nothing more than a means of satisfying her sudden and , to him , fantastical interest in the man under whose dominant bidding the color of so many lives was being modified and blended . A year later a prospector was slowly pushing his way through the wilderness some seventy miles northward of St. Marys . It was springtime and the air was mild , but , while the ridges were already bare , great banks of snow still lay in the deep folds of the hills where the sun but touched them at noon hour . The endless lacework of naked branches now began to be feathered with tender green , and everywhere the bush was alive with the voices of wild things whose blood was stirred to mating by the soft caresses of the southerly wind . Thrusting through a patch of tangled undergrowth , the man reached higher ground and , advancing to a hillock , stood with his hat off and his brown face steaming with sweat . He was of middle age , with short , sturdy frame , a broad face of pale , copper color , swarthy black brows and a small , stringy mustache .