"I am distressed. But why do you come here?"

"I aim to sell out to you."

"What is your price, William?"

"A hundred and fifty thousand, cash."

Slayforth lifted protesting palms. "My dear man—"

"That's cheaper'n good advice, and you know it. I took out 'most that much last winter with a scowegian gang of six. Here's the bank's O.K. But I ain't got use for a lot of money, Doc. I wouldn't know how to run a vineyard like you do. All I want is a nice little corner saloon or a cattle ranch."

"It is a large sum of money you ask. There is always an element of uncertainty about placer mining." Doctor Slayforth failed to conceal the gleam of avarice in his eyes.

"Doc, take it from me; there ain't a particle of uncertainty about Eclipse Creek," Bill earnestly assured his hearer. "If I told you what's there you wouldn't believe me. But Thomas, he's got a gal and I got a cough. They both need attention, and he's the only guy that can give it. We're willing to hand you Eclipse Creek if you'll take it."

There was considerable conversation, and a visit to Eclipse Creek, but the doctor, it proved, was willing to take any good bargain, and a few days later the transfer was made. When the larger part of Slayforth's winter's clean-up had changed hands the two partners adjourned to Thomas's little office.

"Well!" The physician heaved a deep sigh of relief. "It's all over, and—I feel as if I were dreaming."

"The Oregon sails to-morrow. It's time to stomp on the fire."

"I—I wonder if we were wise to sell out at that price," the doctor mused, doubtfully.

"You lay a bet on it, bo. Something tells me that soul-saver will go bust on Eclipse Creek. I got a hunch that way." Mr. Hyde's seamy face wrinkled into a broad grin.

"Well, I've more faith in your hunches than I used to have. You've been a good friend, Bill, and a square one." The speaker choked, then wrung his partner's hand. "I've cabled Alice to meet us. I want you to know her and—I want her to see that I cured you, after all."

"I'd admire to meet her, but my taste has allus run more to brunettes," said Mr. Hyde. Then, since he abhorred emotional display, he continued, briskly: "Now call the dog. I'm off to buy our duckets."

Laughing Bill purchased three tickets instead of two, then he went in search of Ponatah. It so chanced that he found her alone. Now neither he nor any other man had ever called upon her, therefore she was dumfounded at his coming.

"Well, Kid," he announced, "me 'n' the Doc have sold Eclipse Creek, and we bow out tomorrow on the big smoke."

Ponatah opened her lips, but no sound issued. She possessed a strong young body, but the strength, the life, seemed suddenly to go out of it, leaving her old and spiritless.

"Got a kind word for us?" the man inquired, with a twinkle.

"I'm glad you struck it rich," she murmured, dully. "You—you'll take care of yourself, Billy?"

"Who, me? I don't s'pose so. I don't know how to take care of nothing." There was a moment of silence. "Like me?" he asked.

Ponatah turned away blindly, but as she did so Laughing Bill put his hand gently upon her shoulder, saying:

"Cheer up, Kid. You're going to join the troupe. I've come to get you."

There was amazement, incredulity, in the girl's face as she lifted it to his. "What do you—mean?" she quavered. "Are you going to—marry me?"

"You guessed it!" he laughed. "I been aiming to put up that job on you for a long time, but I had a lot of deals on my hands. I was a sort of power-of-attorney for a coupla simps, and it kept me busy. If you think the two of us can do with three lungs, why, we'll grab a psalm-shouter and—"

"Billy! Billy!" Ponatah clung to him fiercely, hungrily. "Oh, Billy—I'll make you well. We'll go to Arizona, Colorado, Montana—where it is high and dry—"

"I been to them places," he told her, dubiously, "and I 'most stopped breathing altogether."

"New Mexico, then. You won't be ashamed of me there."

"Say, Kid! I wouldn't be ashamed of a harelip and warts in New Mexico. But you got me wrong; I'm plumb proud of you, and just to prove it I aim to make you carry our bank-roll in your name. That's how she stands at the bank, and that's how she's goin' to stand. From time to time you can gimme a check for what you think I'm wuth. Now then, do with me as you will; grab your lid; we'll join hands and be soldered up."

Laughing Bill stared after the girl as she hurried away; musingly he said: "The little Doc got in on no pair, for it was all her coin, of course. But she'd 'a' had to split, fifty-fifty, with a lawyer, so it ain't a bad deal all around."



THE NORTH WIND'S MALICE

It had snowed during the night, but toward morning it had grown cold; now the sled-runners complained and the load dragged heavily. Folsom, who had been heaving at the handle-bars all the way up the Dexter Creek hill, halted his dogs at the crest and dropped upon the sled, only too glad of a breathing spell. His forehead was wet with sweat; when it began to freeze in his eyebrows he removed his mittens and wiped away the drops, then watched them congeal upon his fingers. Yes, it was all of thirty below, and a bad morning to hit the trail, but—Folsom's face set itself—better thirty below in the open than the frigid atmosphere of an unhappy home.

Harkness, who had led the way up the hill, plodded onward for a time before discovering that his companion had paused; then, through the ring of hoar frost around his parka hood, he called back:

"I'll hike down to the road-house and warm up."

Folsom made no answer, he did not even turn his head. Taciturnity was becoming a habit with him, and already he was beginning to dislike his new partner. For that matter he disliked everybody this morning.

Below him lay the level tundra, merging indistinguishably with the white anchor-ice of Behring Sea; beyond that a long black streak of open water, underscoring the sky as if to emphasize the significance of that empty horizon, a horizon which for many months would remain unsmudged by smoke. To Folsom it seemed that the distant stretch of dark water was like a prison wall, barring the outside world from him and the other fools who had elected to stay "inside."

Fools? Yes; they were all fools!

Folsom was a "sour-dough." He had seen the pranks that Alaskan winters play with men and women, he had watched the alteration in minds and morals made by the Arctic isolation, and he had considered himself proof against the malice that rides the north wind—the mischief that comes with the winter nights. He had dared to put faith in his perfect happiness, thinking himself different from other men and Lois superior to other wives, wherefore he now called himself a fool!

Sprawled beside the shore, five miles away, was Nome, its ugliness of corrugated iron, rough boards, and tar paper somewhat softened by the distance. From the jumble of roofs he picked out one and centered his attention upon it. It was his roof—or had been. He wondered, with a sudden flare of wrathful indignation, if Lois would remember that fact during his absence. But he banished this evil thought. Lois had pride, there was nothing common about her; he could not believe that she would affront the proprieties. It was to spare that very pride of hers, even more than his own, that he had undertaken this adventure to the Kobuk; and now, as he looked back upon Nome, he told himself that he was acting handsomely in totally eliminating himself, thus allowing her time and freedom in which to learn her heart. He hoped that before his return she would have chosen between him and the other man.

It was too cold to remain idle long. Folsom's damp body began to chill, so he spoke to his team and once more heaved upon the handle-bars.

Leaving the crest of the ridge behind, the dogs began to run; they soon brought up in a tangle at the road-house door. When Harkness did not appear in answer to his name Folsom entered, to find his trail-mate at the bar, glass in hand.

"Put that down!" Folsom ordered, sharply.

Harkness did precisely that, then he turned, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. He was a small, fox-faced man; with a grin he invited the new-comer to "have one."

"Don't you know better than to drink on a day like this?" the latter demanded.

"Don't worry about me. I was raised on 'hootch,'" said Harkness.

"It's bad medicine."

"Bah! I'll travel further drunk than—" Harkness measured his critic with an insolent eye—"than some folks sober." He commenced to warm himself at the stove, whereupon the other cried, impatiently:

"Come along. We can't stop at every cabin."

But Harkness was in no hurry, he consumed considerable time. When he finally followed Folsom out into the air the latter, being in a peculiarly irritable mood, warned him in a voice which shook with anger:

"We're going to start with an understanding. If you take another drink during the daytime I'll leave you flat."

"Rats! How you aim to get to the Kobuk without me?" asked Harkness.

"I'll manage somehow."

The smaller man shot a startled glance at the speaker, then his insolence vanished. "All right, old top," he said, easily. "But don't cut off your nose to spite your face. Remember, I promised if you'd stick to me you'd wear gold-beaded moccasins." He set off at a trot, with the dogs following.

This fellow Harkness had come with the first snow into Nome, bearing news of a strike on the Kobuk, and despite his braggadocio he had made rather a good impression. That luck which favors fools and fakers had guided him straight to Folsom. He had appeared at a psychological moment in the latter's affairs, two disastrous seasons having almost broken Folsom and rendered him eager to grasp at anything which promised quick returns; moreover, the latter had just had a serious quarrel with his wife. Harkness had offered a half interest in his Kobuk claims for a grubstake and a working partner, and, smarting under the unaccustomed sting of domestic infelicity, the other had accepted, feeling sure in his own mind that Lois would not let him leave her when the time came to go. But the time had come, and Lois had offered no objection. She had acted strangely, to be sure, but she had made no effort to dissuade him. It seemed as if the proposal to separate for the winter had offended rather than frightened her. Well, that was the way with women; there was no pleasing them; when you tried to do the decent thing by them they pretended to misunderstand your motives. If you paid them the compliment of utter confidence they abused it on the pretext that you didn't love them; if you allowed your jealousy to show, they were offended at your lack of trust.

So ran the husband's thoughts. He hoped that six months of widowhood would teach Lois her own mind, but it hurt to hit the trail with nothing more stimulating than a listless kiss and a chill request to write when convenient. Now that he was on his way he began to think of the pranks played by malicious nature during the long, dark nights, and to wonder if he had acted wisely in teaming up with this footless adventurer. He remembered the malice that rides the winter winds, the mischief that comes to Arctic widows, and he grew apprehensive.

The travelers put up that night at the Tin Road-house, a comfortless shack sheathed with flattened kerosene cans, and Folsom's irritation at his new partner increased, for Harkness was loud, boastful, and blatantly egotistical, with the egotism that accompanies dense ignorance.

The weather held cold, the snow remained as dry as sand, so they made slow progress, and the husband had ample time to meditate upon his wrongs, but the more he considered them the less acutely they smarted him and the gentler became his thoughts of Lois. The solitudes were healing his hurt, the open air was cooling his anger.

At Kougarok City, a miserable huddle of cottonwood cabins, Harkness escaped his partner's watchful eye and got drunk. Folsom found the fellow clinging to the bar and entertaining a crowd of loafers with his absurd boastings. In a white fury he seized the wretch, dragged him from the room, and flung him into his bunk, then stood guard over him most of the night.

It was during the quieter hours when the place rumbled to snores that Folsom yielded to his desire to write his wife, a desire which had been growing steadily. He was disgusted with Harkness, disappointed with the whole Kobuk enterprise, and in a peculiarly softened mood, therefore, he wrote with no attempt to conceal his yearning, homesick tenderness.

But when he read the letter in the morning it struck him as weak and sentimental, just the sort of letter he would regret having written if it should transpire that Lois did not altogether share his feelings. So he tore it up.

Those were the days of faint trails and poor accommodations; as yet the road to the Arctic was little traveled and imperfectly known, so Harkness acted as guide. He had bragged that he knew every inch of the country, but he soon proved that his ideas of distance were vague and faulty—a serious shortcoming in a land with no food, no shelter, and no firewood except green willows in the gulch-bottoms. Folsom began to fear that the fellow's sense of direction was equally bad, and taxed him with it, but Harkness scoffed at the idea.

Leaving the last road-house behind them, they came into a hilly section of great white domes, high hog-backs, and ramifying creeks, each one exactly like its neighbor; two days' travel through this, according to Harkness, should have brought them to the Imnachuck, where there was food and shelter again. But when they pitched camp for the second night Folsom felt compelled to remind his partner that they were behind their schedule, and that this was the last of their grub.

"Are you sure you're going right?" he inquired.

"Sure? Of course I'm sure. D'you think I'm lost?"

Folsom fed some twisted willow-tops into the sheet-iron stove. "I wouldn't recommend you as a pathfinder," said he. "You said we'd sleep out one night. This is two, and to-morrow we'll walk hungry."

"Well, don't blame me!" challenged the other. "I'm going slow on your account."

Now nothing could have galled Folsom more than a reflection upon his ability to travel. His lips whitened, he was upon the point of speaking his mind, but managed to check himself in time. Harkness's personality rasped him to the raw, and he had for days struggled against an utterly absurd but insistent desire to seize the little coxcomb by the throat and squeeze the arrogance out of him as juice is squeezed out of a lemon. There is flesh for which one's fingers itch.

"I notice you're ready to camp when I am," the larger man muttered. "Understand, this is no nice place to be without grub, for it's liable to storm any hour, and storms last at this season."

"Now don't get cold feet." Harkness could be maddeningly patronizing when he chose. "Leave it to me. I'll take you a short cut, and we'll eat lunch in a cabin to-morrow noon."

But noon of the next day found Harkness still plodding up the river with the dogs close at his heels. The hills to the northward were growing higher, and Folsom's general knowledge of direction told him that they were in danger of going too far.

"I think the Imnachuck is over there," said he.

Harkness hesitated, then he nodded: "Right-o! It's just over that low saddle." He indicated a sweeping hillside ahead, and a half-mile further on he left the creek and began to climb. This was heavy work for the dogs, and mid-afternoon came before the partners had gained the summit only to discover that they were not upon a saddleback after all, but upon the edge of a vast rolling tableland from which a fanlike system of creeks radiated. In all directions was a desolate waste of barren peaks.

Folsom saw that the sky ahead was thick and dark, as if a storm impended, and realizing only too well the results of the slightest error in judgment he called to Harkness. But the latter pretended not to hear, and took advantage of the dogs' fatigue to hurry out of earshot. It was some time before the team overhauled him.

"Do you know where you are?" Folsom inquired.

"Certainly." Harkness studied the panorama spread before him. "That blue gulch yonder is the Imnachuck." He pointed to a valley perhaps four miles away.

A fine snow began to sift downward. The mountain peaks to the northward became obscured as by thin smoke, the afternoon shortened with alarming swiftness. Night, up here with a blizzard brewing, was unthinkable, so after a while the driver called another halt.

"Something informs me that you're completely lost," he said, mildly.

"Who, me? There she is." Harkness flung out a directing hand once more.

Folsom hesitated, battling with his leaping desires, and upon that momentary hesitation hinged results out of all proportions to the gravity of the situation—issues destined to change the deepest channels of his life. Folsom hesitated, then he yielded to his impulse, and the luxury of yielding made him drunk. He walked around the sled, removing his mittens with his teeth as he went. Without a word he seized his companion by the throat and throttled him until his eyes protruded and his face grew black and bloated. He relaxed his stiff fingers finally, then he shook the fellow back to consciousness.

"Just as I thought," he cried, harshly. "That's not the gulch you pointed out before. You're lost and you won't admit it."

Harkness pawed the air and fought for his breath. There was abject terror in his eyes. He reeled away, but saw there was no safety in flight.

"Own up!" Folsom commanded.

"You—said this was the way," the pathfinder whimpered. "You made me—turn off—" Folsom uttered a growl and advanced a step, whereupon his victim gurgled: "D-don't touch me! That's the Imnachuck, so help me God! I'm—I'm almost sure it is."

"Almost!" The speaker stooped for his mittens and shook the snow out of them; he was still struggling to control himself. "Look here, Mr. Know-It-All, I've never been here before, and you have; somewhere in your thick skull there must be some faint remembrance of the country. You got us into this fix, and I'm going to give you one more chance to get us out of it. Don't try to think with your head, let your feet think for you, and maybe they'll carry you to the right gulch. If they don't—" Folsom scanned the brooding heavens and his lips compressed. "We're in for a storm and—we'll never weather it. Take one look while there's light to see by, then turn your feet loose and pray that they lead you right, for if they don't, by God, I'll cut you loose!"

It soon proved that memory lay neither in Harkness's head nor in his feet; when he had veered aimlessly about for half an hour, evidently fearing to commit himself to a definite course, and when the wind came whooping down, rolling a twilight smother ahead of it, Folsom turned his dogs into the nearest depression and urged them to a run. The grade increased, soon brittle willow-tops brushed against the speeding sled: this brush grew higher as the two men, blinded now by the gale, stumbled onward behind the team. They emerged from the gulch into a wider valley, after a while, and a mile further on the dogs burst through a grove of cottonwoods and fetched up before a lighted cabin window.

Harkness pulled back his parka hood and cried, boastfully: "What did I tell you? I knew where I was all the time." Then he went in, leaving his partner to unhitch the team and care for it.

Friendships ripen and enmities deepen quickly on the trail, seeds of discord sprout and flourish in the cold. Folsom's burst of temper had served to inflame a mutual dislike, and as he and Harkness journeyed northward that dislike deepened into something akin to hatred, for the men shared the same bed, drank from the same pot, endured the same exasperations. Nothing except their hope of mutual profit held them together. In our careless search for cause and effect we are accustomed to attribute important issues to important happenings, amazing consequences to amazing deeds; as a matter of fact it is the trivial action, the little thing, the thing unnoticed and forgotten which bends our pathways and makes or breaks us.

Harkness was a hare-brained, irresponsible person, incapable of steadiness in thought or action, too weak to cherish actual hatred, too changeable to nurse a lasting grudge. It is with such frail instruments that prankish fate delights to work, and, although he never suspected it, the luxury of yielding to that sudden gust of passion cost Folsom dear.

Arrived finally at the Kobuk the miner examined the properties covered by his option, and impressed by the optimism of the men who had made the gold discovery he paid Harkness the price agreed upon. The deal completed, he sent the fellow back to Candle Creek, the nearest post, for supplies. Folsom's mood had altogether changed by now, so, strangling his last doubt of Lois, he wrote her as he had written at Kougarok City, and intrusted the letter to his associate.

Harkness, promptly upon his arrival at Candle, got drunk. He stayed drunk for three days, and it was not until he was well started on his way back to the Kobuk that he discovered Folsom's letter still in his pocket.

Now, to repeat, the man was not malicious, neither was he bad, but as he debated whether he should back-track there came to him the memory of his humiliation on the Imnachuck divide.

So! His brains were in his feet, eh? Folsom had strangled him until he kicked, when, all the time, they had been on the right trail. Harkness felt a flash of rage, like the flare of loose gunpowder, and in the heat of it he tore the letter to atoms. It was a womanish, spiteful thing to do, and he regretted it, but later when he greeted the husband he lied circumstantially and declared he had given the missive into the hands of the mail-carrier on the very hour of his departure. By this time, doubtless, it was nearly to Nome. Soon thereafter Harkness forgot all about the incident.

Folsom was a fast worker. He hired men and cross-cut the most promising claim. Bed-rock was shallow, and he soon proved it to be barren, so he went on to the next property. When he had prospected this claim with no better results than before he wrote his wife confessing doubts of the district and voicing the fear that his winter's work would be wasted. Again he let his pen run as it would; the letter he gave to a neighbor who was leaving for Candle Creek in the morning.

Folsom's neighbor was a famous "musher," a seasoned, self-reliant man, thoroughly accustomed to all the hazards of winter travel, but ten miles from his destination he crossed an inch-deep overflow which rendered the soles of his muk-luks slippery, and ten yards further on, where the wind had laid the glare-ice bare, he lost his footing. He fell and wrenched his ankle and came hobbling into Candle half an hour after the monthly mail for Nome had left.

Three weeks later Folsom wrote his wife for the third time, and again a month after that. All three letters joined company in Candle Creek; for meanwhile the mail-man's lead dog had been killed in a fight with a big malamute at Lane's Landing, causing its owner to miss a trip. Now dog-fights are common; by no logic could one attribute weighty results to the loss of a sixty-pound leader, but in this instance it so happened that the mail-carrier's schedule suffered so that his contract was canceled.

Meanwhile a lonely woman waited anxiously in Nome, and as the result of a stranger's spite, a wet muk-luk, and a vicious malamute her anxiety turned to bitterness and distrust.

It is never difficult to forward mail in the north, for every "musher" is a postman. When news came to Candle Creek that the Government service had been discontinued the storekeeper, one end of whose bar served as post-office, sacked his accumulated letters and intrusted them to some friends who were traveling southward on the morrow. The trader was a canny man, but he loved to gamble, so when his friends offered to bet him that they could lower the record from Candle to Nome he went out into the night, sniffed the air and studied the stars, then laid them a hundred dollars that they could not.

Excited to recklessness by this wager the volunteer mail-men cut down their load. They left their stove and tent and grub-box behind, planning to make a road-house every night except during the long jump from the Imnachuck to Crooked River. They argued that it was worth a hundred dollars to sleep once under the open sky.

The fruits of that sporting enterprise were bitter; the trader won his bet, but he never cashed it in. Somewhere out on the high barrens a storm swooped down upon the travelers. To one who has never faced an Arctic hurricane it seems incredible that strong men have died within call of cozy cabins or have frozen with the lashings of their sleds but half untied. Yet it is true. The sudden awful cold, the shouting wind, the boiling, blinding, suffocating rush of snow; the sweaty clothes that harden into jointless armor; the stiff mittens and the clumsy hands inside—these tell a tale to those who know.

The two mail-carriers managed to get into their sleeping-bags, but the gale, instead of drifting them over with a protective mantle of snow, scoured the mountain-side bare to the brittle reindeer moss, and they began to freeze where they lay. Some twenty hours they stood it, then they rose and plunged ahead of the hurricane like bewildered cattle. The strongest man gave up first and lay down, babbling of things to eat. His companion buried him, still alive, and broke down the surrounding willow-tops for a landmark, then he staggered on. By some miracle of good luck, or as a result of some unsuspected power of resistance, he finally came raving into the Crooked River Road-house. When the wind subsided they hurried him to Nome, but he was frightfully maimed and as a result of his amputations he lay gabbling until long after the spring break-up.

Folsom did not write again. In fact, when no word came from Lois, he bitterly regretted the letters he had written. He heard indirectly from her; new-comers from Nome told him that she was well, but that was all. It was enough. He did not wish to learn more.

Spring found him with barely enough money to pay his way back. He was blue, bitter, disheartened, but despite the certainty that his wife had forsaken him he still cherished a flickering hope of a reconciliation. Strangely enough he considered no scheme of vengeance upon the other man, for he was sane and healthy, and he loved Lois too well to spoil her attempt at happiness.

It so happened that the Arctic ice opened up later this spring than for many seasons; therefore the short summer was well under way before the first steam-schooner anchored off the Kobuk. Folsom turned his back upon the wreck of his high hopes, his mind solely engaged with the problem of how to meet Lois and ascertain the truth without undue embarrassment to her and humiliation to himself. The prospect of seeing her, of touching her, of hearing her voice, affected him painfully. He could neither eat nor sleep on the way to Nome, but paced the deck in restless indecision. He had come to consider himself wholly to blame for their misunderstanding, and he wished only for a chance to win back her love, with no questions asked and no favors granted.

When there were less than fifty miles to go the steamer broke her shaft. There was no particular reason why that shaft should break, but break it did, and for eighteen hours—eighteen eternities to Folsom—the ship lay crippled while its engine-room crew labored manfully.

Folsom had been so long in the solitudes that Nome looked like a big city when he finally saw it. There were several ships in the roadstead, and one of them was just leaving as the Kobuk boat came to anchor. She made a splendid sight as she gathered way.

The returning miner went ashore in the first dory and as he stepped out upon the sand a friend greeted him:

"Hello there, old settler! Where you been all winter?"

"I've been to the Kobuk," Folsom told him.

"Kobuk? I hear she's a bum."

"'Bum' is right. Maybe she'll do to dredge some day."

"Too bad you missed the Oregon; there she goes now." The man pointed seaward.

"Too bad?"

"Sure! Don't you know? Why, Miz Folsom went out on her!"

Folsom halted; after a momentary pause he repeated, vaguely, "Went out?"

"Exactly. Didn't you know she was going?"

"Oh yes—of course! The Oregon!" Folsom stared at the fading plume of black smoke; there was a curious brightness in his eyes, his face was white beneath its tan. "She sailed on the Oregon and I missed her, by an hour! That broken shaft—" He began to laugh, and turning his back upon the sea he plodded heavily through the sand toward the main street.

Folsom found no word from his wife, his house was empty; but he learned that "the man" had also gone to the States, and he drew his own conclusions. Since Lois had ordered her life as she saw fit there was nothing to do but wait and endure—doubtless the divorce would come in time. Nevertheless, he could not think of that broken shaft without raving.

Being penniless he looked for work, and his first job came from a small Jewish merchant, named Guth, who offered him a hundred dollars to do the assessment work on a tundra claim. For twenty days Folsom picked holes through frozen muck, wondering why a thrifty person like Guth would pay good money to hold such unpromising property as this.

The claim was in sight of Nome, and as Folsom finished his last day's labor he heard bells ringing and whistles blowing and discovered that the town was ablaze. He hurried in to find that an entire block in the business center of the city had been destroyed and with it Guth's little store, including all its contents. He found the Jew in tears.

"What a misfortune!" wailed the merchant. "Ruined, absolutely—and by a match! It started in my store—my little girl, you understand? And now, all gone!" He tore his beard and the tears rolled down his cheeks.

The little man's grief was affecting, and so Folsom inquired more gently than he intended, "I'm sorry, of course, but how about my money for the Lulu assessment?"

"Money? There's your money!" Guth pointed sadly into the smoldering ruins. "Go find it—you're welcome to anything I have left. Gott! What a country! How can a man get ahead, with no insurance?"

Folsom laughed mirthlessly. His hard luck was becoming amusing and he wondered how long it would last. He had counted on that hundred dollars to get away from Nome, hoping to shake misfortune from his heels, but a match in the hands of a child, like that broken propeller shaft, had worked havoc with his plans. Well, it was useless to cry.

To the despairing Hebrew he said: "Don't lose your grip, old man. Buck up and take another start. You have your wife and your little girl, at least, and you're the sort who makes good."

"You think so?" Guth looked up, grateful for the first word of encouragement he had heard.

"It's a cinch! Only don't lose your courage."

"I—I'll do what's right by you, Mr. Folsom," declared the other. "I'll deed you a half interest in the Lulu."

But Folsom shook his head. "I don't want it. There's nothing there except moss and muck and salmon berries, and it's a mile to bed-rock. No, you're welcome to my share; maybe you can sell the claim for enough to make a new start or to buy grub for the wife and the kid. I'll look for another job."

For a month or more the lonesome husband "stevedored," wrestling freight on the lighters, then he disappeared. He left secretly, in the night, for by now he had grown fanciful and he dared to hope that he could dodge his Nemesis. He turned up in Fairbanks, a thousand miles away, and straightway lost himself in the hills.

He had not covered his tracks, however, for bad luck followed him.

Now no man starves in Alaska, for there is always work for the able-bodied; but whatever Folsom turned his hand to failed, and by and by his courage went. He had been a man of consequence in Nome; he had made money and he had handled other men, therefore his sense of failure was the bitterer.

Meanwhile, somewhere in him there remained the ghost of his faith in Lois, the faintly flickering hope that some day they would come together again. It lay dormant in him, like an irreligious man's unacknowledged faith in God and a hereafter, but it, too, vanished when he read in a Seattle newspaper, already three months old, the announcement of his wife's divorce. He flinched when he read that it had been won on the grounds of desertion, and thereafter he shunned newspapers.

Spring found him broke, as usual. He had become bad company and men avoided him. It amused him grimly to learn that a new strike had been made in Nome, the biggest discovery in the camp's history, and to realize that he had fled just in time to miss the opportunity of profiting by it. He heard talk of a prehistoric sea-beach line, a streak of golden sands which paralleled the shore and lay hidden below the tundra mud. News came of overnight fortunes, of friends grown prosperous and mighty. Embittered anew, Folsom turned again to the wilderness, and he did not reappear until the summer was over. He came to town resolved to stay only long enough to buy bacon and beans, but he had lost his pocket calendar and arrived on a Sunday, when the stores were closed.

Even so little a thing as the loss of that calendar loomed big in the light of later events, for in walking the streets he encountered a friend but just arrived from the Behring coast.

The man recognized him, despite his beard and his threadbare mackinaws and they had a drink together.

"I s'pose you heard about that Third Beach Line?" the new-comer inquired. Folsom nodded. "Well, they've opened it up for miles, and it's just a boulevard of solid gold. 'Cap' Carter's into it big, and so are the O'Brien boys and Old Man Hendricks. They're lousy with pay."

"I did the work on a tundra claim," said Folsom; "the Lulu—"

"The Lulu!" Folsom's friend stared at him. "Haven't you heard about the Lulu? My God! Where you been, anyhow? Why, the Lulu's a mint! Guth is a millionaire and he made it all without turning a finger."

Folsom's grip on the bar-rail tightened until his knuckles were white.

"I'm telling you right, old man; he's the luckiest Jew in the country. He let a lay to McCarthy and Olson, and they took out six hundred thousand dollars, after Christmas."

"Guth offered me a—half interest in the Lulu when his store burned and—I turned it down. He's never paid me for that assessment work."

The Nomeite was speechless with amazement. "The son-of-a-gun!" he said, finally. "Well, you can collect now. Say! That's what he meant when he told me he wanted to see you. Guth was down to the boat when I left, and he says: 'If you see Folsom up river tell him to come back. I got something for him.' Those were his very words. That little Jew aims to pay you a rotten hundred so you won't sue him for an interest. By Gorry, I wouldn't take it! I'd go back and make him do the right thing. I'd sue him. I'd bust him in the nose! A half interest—in the Lulu! My God!" The speaker gulped his drink hastily.

After consideration, Folsom said: "He'll do the right thing. Guth isn't a bad sort."

"No. But he's a Jew; trust him to get his."

"I wouldn't ask him to do more than pay his debt. You see I refused his offer."

"What of that? I'd give it a try, anyhow, and see if he wouldn't settle. There's lots of lawyers would take your case. But say, that's the toughest tough-luck story I ever heard. You've sure got a jinx on you."

"I'm going back, but I won't sue Guth. I'm sick of Alaska; it has licked me. I'm going out to God's country."

Folsom indeed acknowledged himself beaten. The narrow margin by which he had missed reward for his work and his hardships bred in him such hatred for Alaska that he abruptly changed his plans. He had no heart, perversity had killed his courage. It exasperated him beyond all measure to recall what little things his luck had hinged upon, what straws had turned his feet. A moment of pique with Lois, a broken piece of steel, a match, a momentary whim when Guth offered him payment. It was well that he did not know what part had been played by his quarrel with Harkness, that wet muk-luk, that vicious lead dog, and the storekeeper's wager.

Folsom carried cord-wood to pay for a deck passage down river. He discovered en route that Guth had really tried to get in touch with him, and in fact appeared greatly concerned over his failure to do so, for at Tanana he received another message, and again at St. Michaels. He was grimly amused at the little Jew's craftiness, yet it sorely offended him to think that any one should consider him such a welcher. He had no intention of causing trouble, for he knew he had no legal claim against the fellow, and he doubted if he possessed even a moral right to share in the Lulu's riches. To play upon the Hebrew's fears, therefore, savored of extortion. Nevertheless, he was in no agreeable frame of mind when he arrived at his destination and inquired for Guth.

The new-made millionaire was in his office; Folsom walked in unannounced. He had expected his arrival to create a scene, and he was not disappointed. But Guth's actions were strange, they left the new arrival dazed, for the little man fell upon him with what appeared to be exuberant manifestations of joy.

"Mr. Folsom!" he cried. "You have come! You got my letters, eh? Well, I wrote you everywhere, but I was in despair, for I thought you must be dead. Nobody knew what had become of you."

"I got your message in Fairbanks."

"You heard about the Lulu, eh? Gott! She's a dandy."

"Yes. I can hardly believe it. So, you're rich. Well, I congratulate you, and now I can use that hundred."

Guth chuckled. "Ha! You will have your joke, eh? But the Lulu is no joke. Come, we will go to the bank; I want them to tell you how much she has yielded. You'll blame me for leasing her, but how was I to know what she was?"

"I—Why should I blame—" Folsom stared at the speaker. "It's none of my business what the Lulu has yielded. In fact, I'll sleep better if I don't know."

Little Guth paused and his mouth opened. After a moment he inquired, curiously: "Don't you understand?" There was another pause, then he said, quietly, "I'm a man of my word."

Folsom suddenly saw black, the room began to spin, he passed his hand across his eyes. "Wait! Let's get this straight," he whispered.

"It is all very simple," Guth told him. "We are equal partners in the Lulu—we have been, ever since the day my store burned. It was a little thing you said to me then, but the way you said it, the fact that you didn't blame me, gave me new heart. Did you think I'd renig?" When Folsom found no answer the other nodded slowly. "I see. You probably said, 'That Guth is a Jew and he'll do me up if he can.' Well, I am a Jew, yes, and I am proud of it; but I am an honest man, too, like you."

Folsom turned to the wall and hid his face in the crook of his arm, but with his other hand he groped for that of the Hebrew.

The story of the Lulu is history now; in all the north that mine is famous, for it made half a dozen fortunes. In a daze, half doubting the reality of things, Folsom watched a golden stream pour into his lap. All that winter and the next summer the Lulu yielded wondrously, but one of the partners was not happy, his thoughts being ever of the woman who had left him. Prosperity gave him courage, however, and when he discovered that Lois had not remarried he determined to press his luck as a gambler should.

When the second season's sluicing was over and the ground had frozen he went outside.

The day after he sailed Lois arrived in Nome, on the last boat. She was older, graver; she had heard of the Lulu, but it was not that which had brought her back. She had returned in spite of the Lulu to solve an aching mystery and to learn the why of things. Her husband's riches—she still considered him her husband—merely made the task more trying.

Advised that Folsom had passed almost within hailing distance of her, she pressed her lips together and took up her problem of living. The prospect of another lonely Alaskan winter frightened her, and yet because of the Lulu she could not return by the ship she had come on. Now that Folsom was a Croesus she could not follow him too closely—he might misunderstand. After all, she reflected, it mattered little to her where she lived.

Guth called at her cabin, but she managed to avoid seeing him, and somehow continued to avoid a meeting.

Late in December some travelers from Candle Creek, while breaking a short cut to the head of Crooked River, came upon an abandoned sled and its impedimenta. Snow and rain and summer sun had bleached its wood, its runners were red streaks of rust, its rawhide lashings had been eaten off, but snugly rolled inside the tarpaulin was a sack of mail. This mail the travelers brought in with them, and the Nome newspapers, in commenting upon the find, reprinted the story of that tragic fight for life in the Arctic hurricane, now almost forgotten.

Folsom's three letters reached their destination on Christmas Day. They were stained and yellow and blurred in places, for they were three years old, but the woman read them with eyes wide and wondering, and with heart-beats pounding, for it seemed that dead lips spoke to her. Ten minutes later she was standing at Guth's door, and when he let her in she behaved like one demented. She had the letters hidden in her bosom, and she would not let him see them, but she managed to make known the meaning of her coming.

"You know him," she cried, hysterically. "You made him rich. You've lived alongside of him. Tell me then, has he—has he—changed? These letters are old. Does he still care, or—does he hate me, as he should?"

Guth smiled; he took her shaking hands in his, his voice was gentle. "No, no! He doesn't hate you. He has never mentioned your name to me, or to any one else, so far as I know, but his money hasn't satisfied him. He is sad, and he wants you. That is what took him to the States, I'm sure."

Lois sank into a chair, her face was white, her twisting fingers strained at each other. "I can't understand. I can't make head or tail of it," she moaned. "It seems that I wronged him, but see what ruin he has made for me! Why? Why—?"

"Who can understand the 'why' of anything?" inquired the little Hebrew. "I've heard him curse the perversity of little things, and rave at what he called the 'malice of the north wind.' I didn't dare to ask him what he meant, but I knew he was thinking of the evil which had come between you two. Who was to blame, or what separated you, he never told me. Well, his bad luck has changed, and yours, too; and I'm happy. Now then, the wireless. You can talk to him. Let us go."

An hour later a crackling message was hurled into the empty Christmas sky, a message that pulsed through the voids, was relayed over ice and brine and drifted forests to a lonely, brooding man three thousand miles away.

The answer came rushing back:

"Thank God! Am starting north tomorrow. Love and a million kisses. Wait for me."

Folsom came. Neither ice nor snow, neither winter seas nor trackless wastes, could daunt him, for youth was in his heart and fire ran through his veins. North and west he came by a rimy little steamer, as fast as coal could drive her, then overland more than fifteen hundred miles. His record stands unbroken, and in villages from Katmai to the Kuskokwim the Indians tell of the tall white man with the team of fifteen huskies who raced through as if a demon were at his heels; how he bored headlong into the blizzards and braved January's fiercest rage; how his guides dropped and his dogs died in their collars. That was how Folsom came.

He was thin and brown, the marks of the frost were bitten deep into his flesh when, one evening in early March, he drove into Nome. He had covered sixty miles on the last day's run, and his team was staggering. He left the dogs in their harnesses, where they fell, and bounded through the high-banked streets to Lois's cabin.

It was growing dark, a light gleamed from her window; Folsom glimpsed her moving about inside. He paused to rip the ice from his bearded lips, then he knocked softly, three times.

As he stood there a gentle north wind fanned him. It was deadly cold, but it was fresh and clean and vastly invigorating. There was no malice in it.

At his familiar signal he heard the clatter of a dish, dropped from nerveless fingers, he heard a startled voice cry out his name, then he pressed the latch and entered, smiling.



HIS STOCK IN TRADE

"The science of salesmanship is quite as exact as the science of astronomy," said Mr. Gross, casting his eyes down the table to see that he had the attention of the other boarders, "and much more intricate. The successful salesman is as much an artist in his line as the man who paints pictures or writes books."

"Oh, there's nothing so artistic as writing books," protested Miss Harris, the manicurist. "Nothing except acting, perhaps. Actors are artistic, too. But salesmen! I meet lots in my business, and I'm not strong for them."

Mr. Gross smiled at her indulgently; it was an expression that became him well, and he had rehearsed it often.

"The power to sell goods is a talent, my dear Miss Harris, just like the power to invent machinery or to rule a city, or—or—to keep a set of books. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Green?"

Mrs. Green, the landlady, a brown, gray woman in black, smiled frigidly. "You're so original, Mr. Gross," said she, "it's a pleasure to hear you, I'm sure."

Gross was an impressive talker, due to the fact that he plagiarized office platitudes; he ran on pompously, dropping trade mottoes and shop-worn bits of philosophy until young Mitchell, unable longer to endure the light of admiration he saw in Miss Harris's eyes, rolled up his napkin to the size of a croquette and interrupted by noisily shoving back his chair and muttering under his breath:

"That stuff comes on printed cards. They give it away."

Mrs. Green called to him, "It's bread pudding, Mr. Mitchell, and very nice."

"Thanks! My gout is bad again," he said, at which some of the more frivolous-minded boarders snickered.

"Mitchell is a bright boy—in many ways," Gross remarked, a moment later, "but he's too fresh. I don't think he'll last long at the office."

Instead of climbing to his hall kennel on the fourth floor rear, Louis Mitchell went out upon the rusty little porch of the boarding-house and sat down on the topmost step, reflecting gloomily that a clerk has small chance against a head bookkeeper.

Life at Mrs. Green's pension—she called it that, rates six dollars up, terms six dollars down—had not been the same for the youthful hermit of the hall bedroom since Gross had met him and Miss Harris in the park a few Sundays before and, falling under the witchery of the manicurist's violet eyes, had changed his residence to coincide with theirs. Gross now occupied one of the front rooms, and a corresponding place in the esteem of those less fortunate boarders to whom the mere contemplation of ten dollars a week was an extravagance. Mitchell had long adored the blonde manicurist, but once the same roof sheltered her and the magnificent head bookkeeper, he saw his dream of love and two furnished rooms with kitchenette go glimmering.

Time was when Miss Harris had been content with Sundays in the park, vaudeville—first balcony—on Wednesdays, and a moving picture now and then. These lavish attentions, coupled with an occasional assault upon some delicatessen establishment, had satisfied her cravings for the higher life. Now that Gross had appeared and sown discord with his prodigality she no longer cared for animals and band concerts, she had acquired the orchestra-seat habit, had learned to dance, and, above all, she now possessed a subtle refinement in regard to victuals. She criticized Marlowe's acting, and complained that cold food gave her indigestion. No longer did she sit the summer evenings out with Mitchell, holding his hand in her lap and absent-mindedly buffing his nails, warning him in sweet familiarity that his cuticle was "growing down." In consequence of her defection, fierce resentment smoldered in the young man's breast. He was jealous; he longed to out-squander the extravagant Mr. Gross; he lusted to spend money in unstinted quantities, five dollars an evening if or when necessary.

But there seemed little hope of his ever attaining such a purse-proud position, for while he loomed fairly large in the boarding-house atmosphere of Ohio Street—or had so loomed until the advent of the reckless bookkeeper—he was so small a part of the office force of Comer & Mathison, jobbers of railway supplies, as to resemble nothing multiplied by itself. He received twelve dollars a week, to be sure, for making telephone quotations and extending invoices between times; but when, as the evening shadows of pay-day descended and he drew his envelope, the procedure reminded him vaguely of blackmail, for any office-boy who did not stutter could have held his job.

When at seven forty-five Miss Harris appeared upon the porch with her hat and gloves and two-dollar-ticket air, and tripped gaily away in company with Mr. Gross, young Mitchell realized bitterly that the cost of living had increased and that it was up to him to raise his salary or lose his lady.

He recalled Gross's words at supper-time, and wondered if there really could be a science to business; if there could be anything to success except hard work. Mr. Comer, in his weekly talks to the office force, had repeatedly said so—whence the origin of the bookkeeper's warmed-over wisdom—but Mitchell's duties were so simple and so constricted as to allow no opening for science, or so, at least, it seemed to him. How could he be scientific, how could he find play for genius when he sat at the end of a telephone wire and answered routine questions from a card? Every day the General Railway Sales Manager gave him a price-list of the commodities which C. & M. handled, and when an inquiry came over the 'phone all he was required, all he was permitted, to do was to read the figures and to quote time of delivery. If this resulted in an order the Sales Manager took the credit. An open quotation, on the other hand, made Mitchell the subject of brusque criticism for offering a target to competitors, and when he lost an order he was the goat, not the General Railway Sales Manager.

No one around the office was too lowly to exact homage from the quotation clerk, and no one was tongue-tied in the matter of criticism, hence his position was neither one of dignity nor one that afforded scope for talent in the money-making line. And yet if salesmanship really were a science, Mitchell reasoned, there must be some way in which even a switchboard operator could profit by acquiring it. What if he were buckled to the end of a wire? Human nature is the same, face to face or voice to voice; surely then, if he set his mind to the task, he could make himself more than a mere string of words over a telephone. Heretofore he had been working wholly with his fingers, his ear-drums, and his vocal cords; he determined henceforth to exercise his intelligence, if he had any. It was indeed high time, for Miss Harris was undoubtedly slipping away, lured by luxuries no clerk could afford, and, moreover, he, Mitchell, was growing old; in a scant two years he would be able to vote. He began forthwith to analyze the situation.

There wasn't much to it. His telephone calls came almost wholly from the purchasing departments of the various railroads. Daily requisitions were filled by the stenographers in those railway offices, young ladies who through their long experience were allowed to attend to the more unimportant purchases. It was in quoting prices on these "pick-ups" that Mitchell helloed for eight hours a day. Of course no large orders ever came over his wire, but this small business carried an unusual profit for supply houses like Comer & Mathison, and in consequence it was highly prized.

After a period of intense and painful thought the young man realized, for the first time, that it was not the telephone itself which asked for price and time of delivery, but a weak, imaginative human being, like himself, at the other end of the wire. He reasoned further that if he could convince that person that the voice from Conner & Mathison likewise issued from a human throat, then it might be possible to get away, in a measure at least, from the mechanical part of the business and establish altogether new relations. If there were really a science to salesmanship, it would work at long distance as well as at collar-and-elbow holds, and Mitchell's first task, therefore, should be to project his own personality into the railroad offices. He went to bed still trying to figure the matter out.

His opportunity to test his new-born theory came on the following morning when an irritable female voice over at the Santa Fe asked the price on twenty kegs of rivets.

"Good morning, Santa Fe-male," he answered, cheerily.

There was a moment of amazed silence, then the young lady snapped: "'Good morning'? What is this, the Weather Bureau? I want Comer & Mathison."

"Gee! Can't a fellow display a little courtesy in business?" Mitchell inquired. "I'd rather be nice to you than not."

"All right, Mr. Comer," the voice replied, sarcastically. "Make a nice price on those rivets—and cut out the kidding."

"Listen; my name's not Comer; it's Mitchell. I'm not kidding, either. I want you to ask for me whenever you call up. Every little bit helps, you know."

"Oh, I see. You want the carriage man to call your number. All right, Mitch. If you're out at lunch with Mr. Carnegie the next time I want a dozen number ten sheets I'll have you paged at the Union League Club."

If the speaker liked this kind of blank verse, she had called up the right supply house, for Mitchell came back with:

"Say, if I ever get your number, I'll do the calling, Miss Santa Fe."

"W-what?" came the startled reply.

"I mean what I say. I'd love to call—"

"Is that so? Well, I do all the calling for our, family, and I'm going to call you right now. What's the price of those rivets?"

"Two sixty-five."

"Too high! Good-by."

"Wait a minute." Mitchell checked the lady before she could "plug out" on him. "Now that you've got those rivets out of your system, may I get personal for an instant?"

"Just about an instant."

"I could listen to you all day."

"Oops, Horace; he loves me!" mocked the lady's voice.

"See here, I'm a regular person—with references. I've been talking to you every day for six months, so I feel that we're acquainted. Some pleasant evening, when your crew of hammock gladiators palls on you, let me come around and show you the difference."

"What difference?"

"I'll show you what a real porch-climber is like."

"Indeed! I'll think it over."

Ten minutes later Miss Santa Fe called up again.

"Hello! I want Mitchell, the junior partner."

"This is Mitchell."

"Did you say those rivets were two-fifty?"

"Should they be?"

"They should."

"They are."

"Ship them to Trinidad."

"That's bully of you, Miss Santa Claus. I want to—" But the wire was dead.

Mitchell grinned. Personality did count after all, and he had proved that it could be projected over a copper wire.

An hour later when Miss Northwestern called him for a price on stay-bolt iron she did not ring off for fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time she promised to take the first opportunity of having another chat. In a similar manner, once the ice had been broken at the C. & E.I., Mitchell learned that the purchasing agent was at West Baden on his vacation; that he had stomach trouble and was cranky; that the speaker loved music, particularly Chaminade and George Cohan, although Beethoven had written some good stuff; that she'd been to Grand Haven on Sunday with her cousin, who sold hats out of Cleveland and was a prince with his money, but drank; and that the price on corrugated iron might be raised ten cents without doing any damage.

On the following afternoon Murphy, the Railroad Sales Manager, stopped on his way past Mitchell's desk to inquire:

"Say, have you been sending orchids to Miss Dunlap over at the Santa Fe? I was in there this morning, and she wanted to know all about you."

"Did you boost me?" Louis inquired. "It won't hurt your sales to plug my game."

"She said you and she are 'buddies' over the wire. What did she mean?"

"Oh, wire pals, that's all. What kind of a looker is she, Mr. Murphy?"

The Sales Manager shrugged his shoulders. "She looks as if she was good to her mother." Then he sauntered away.

Mitchell, in the days that followed, proceeded to become acquainted with the Big Four, and in a short time was so close to the Lackawanna that he called her Phoebe Snow. The St. Paul asked for him three times in one afternoon, and the Rock Island, chancing to ring up while he was busy, threatened to hang crepe on the round-house if he were not summoned immediately to enter an order for a manhole crab.

Within a week he became the most thoroughly telephoned person in the office, and had learned the tastes, the hopes, the aims, and the ambitions of his respective customers. Miss C. & E.I., for instance, whose real name was Gratz, was a bug on music; Miss Northwestern was literary. She had read everything Marion Crawford ever wrote, and considered her the greatest writer Indiana had produced, but was sorry to learn from Mitchell that her marriage to Capt. Jack Crawford had turned out so unhappily—some men were brutes, weren't they? There was a hidden romance gnawing at the Big Four's heart, and Phoebe Snow had a picture of James K. Hackett on her desk and wanted to start a poultry farm. The Santa Fe had been married once, but had taken her maiden name, it was so much pleasanter in business.

As Mitchell's telephone orders piled up, day after day, Murphy began to treat him more like an employee than a "hand," and finally offered him a moderate expense account if he cared to entertain his railroad trade. When the young man's amazement at this offer had abated sufficiently for him to accept he sent the office-boy around to the Santa Fe on the run, instructing him to size up Miss Dunlap and report. It was the first order he had ever issued in the office, and the news spread quickly that he had been "raised."

Mr. Gross took occasion to congratulate the despised underling with pompous insincerity, whereat Louis admonished him scowlingly to beat it back to his trial balance or he'd bounce a letter-press on his dome.

When the office-boy reappeared he turned in a laconic report, "She's a peach!"

Mitchell sweated the lad for further details, then nearly strained a tendon in getting to the telephone booth.

"Hello, Miss Dunlap," he called. "Are you tied up for to-night?"

"I'm knot. The k is silent."

"Will you go to the theater with me?"

"Nickelodeon?"

"No, Montgomery and Stone."

The lady muttered something unintelligible, then she tittered nervously. "Those top balconies make me dizzy."

"How about the orchestra—sixth row? Could you keep your head there?"

"You must own a bill-board."

"No, it's a bank-book; same initials, you see. I'm an heiress."

"See here, Mitch"—Miss Dunlap became serious—"you're a good little copper-wire comedian, but I don't know you nor your people."

"Well, I come from one of the oldest families in Atwood, Michigan, and that town was settled over thirty years ago."

"But you don't know me," the lady demurred.

"I do, too. You're a tall blonde, gray eyes, blue dress; you have a dimple—"

"Well, I declare! All right, then; seven-thirty to-night, six hundred and twelve Filbert Street, fourth apartment, and many thanks."

Fifteen minutes before the appointed time Louis Mitchell was fidgeting nervously outside the Filbert Street cold-water "walk-up" known as Geraldine Manor, wondering if Miss Dunlap would notice his clothes. Twelve dollars a week had starved his wardrobe until it resembled the back-drop for a "Pity the Blind" card; but promptly on the minute he punched the button at the fourth apartment. An instant later he realized that no matter how he looked he had it on Miss Dunlap by eighty per cent.

She was a blonde, to be sure, for the time being, and by the grace of H{2}O{2}. One glance convinced her caller of two things—viz., that his office-boy did not care much for peaches, and that the Santa Fe purchasing agent had a jealous wife. The most that possibly could be said in praise of Miss Dunlap's appearance was that she was the largest stenographer in Chicago. Then and there, however, her caller qualified as a salesman; he smiled and he chatted in a free and easy way that had the lady roped, thrown, and lashed to his chariot in three minutes by her alarm-clock.

They went to the theater, and when Montgomery sprang a joke or Stone did a fall Miss Dunlap showed her appreciation after the fashion of a laughing hyena. Between times she barked enthusiastically, giving vent to sounds like those caused when a boy runs past a picket fence with a stick in his hand. She gushed, but so does Old Faithful. Anyhow, the audience enjoyed her greatly.

At supper Mitchell secured parking space for his companion at the Union Cafe, and there he learned how a welsh rabbit may be humiliated by a woman. During the debacle he fingered the money in his pocket, then shut his eyes and ordered a bottle of champagne, just to see if it could be done. Contrary to his expectation, the waiter did not swoon; nor was he arrested. Root-beer had been Mitchell's main intoxicant heretofore, but as he and the noisy Miss Dunlap sipped the effervescing wine over their ice-cream, they pledged themselves to enjoy Monday evenings together, and she told him, frankly:

"Mitch, you're the nickel-plated entertainer, and I'll never miss another Monday eve unless I'm in the shops or the round-house. You certainly have got class."

At breakfast Miss Harris regarded Lotus darkly, for Mr. Gross had told her just enough to excite her curiosity.

"Where were you last night?" she inquired.

"I went to a show."

"Were the pictures good?"

"They don't have pictures at the Grand."

"Oh—h!" The manicurist's violet eyes opened wide. "Louis—you drank something. You're awful pale. What was it?"

"Clicquot! That's my favorite brand."

Miss Harris clutched the table-cloth and pulled a dish into her lap. After a moment she said: "Maybe you'll take me somewhere to-night. We haven't been out together for the longest time."

"Oh, I see! This is Gross's night at the Maccabbees', isn't it?" Louis gloated brutally over her confusion. "Sorry, but I'll probably have to entertain some more customers. The firm is keeping me busy."

At the office things went most pleasantly for the next few weeks; sixty per cent. of the city's railroad business came to Comer & Mathison; the clerks began to treat Mitchell as if he were an equal; even Gross lost his patronizing air and became openly hateful, while Murphy—Louis no longer called him Mister—increased his assistant's expense account and confided some of his family affairs to the latter. Mr. Comer, the senior partner, began to nod familiarly as he passed the quotation clerk's desk.

Nor were Louis's customers all so eccentric as Miss Dunlap. Phoebe Snow, for instance, was very easy to entertain, and the Northwestern took to his custody like a hungry urchin to a barbecue. He gave them each one night a week, and in a short time all his evenings were taken, as a consequence of which he saw less and less of Miss Harris. But, although he and his manicurist were becoming strangers, he soon began to call the waiters at Rector's by their given names, and a number of the more prominent cab-drivers waved at him.

One morning when, for the tenth successive time, he slid into his desk-chair an hour late, Mr. Comer bowed to him, not only familiarly, but sarcastically, then invited him to step into his private office and see if he could locate the center of the carpet. It was a geometrical task that Louis had been wishing to try for some time.

The senior partner began with elaborate sarcasm. "I notice you're not getting down until nine o'clock lately, Mr. Mitchell. Is your automobile out of order?"

"I have no automobile, Mr. Comer," the youth replied, respectfully.

"No? I'm surprised. Well, if eight sharp is too early, you may set your time."

Mitchell tried his best to appear disconcerted. "You know I'm busy every evening with my trade," said he.

"Nonsense. I've seen you out with a different dressmaker every night that I've been down-town."

"Those are not dressmakers, they are stenographers from the railroad offices. I'm sorry you're not satisfied with me, but I'm glad you called me in, for I've been meaning to speak to you about this very thing. You see, I have practically all the railroad business in the city, and it takes too much of my time keeping it lined up. I have no leisure of my own. I'll quit Saturday night, if convenient."

Mr. Comer grunted like a man who has stepped off a flight of stairs one step too soon. "I didn't know it was really business. Of course, if it is, why, you needn't quit—exactly—"

"I'm afraid I'll have to." Mitchell dropped his eyes demurely. "I've had a number of offers, and in justice to myself—"

"Offers? You? How much?"

"One hundred a month and expenses."

Mr. Comer removed his glasses, he polished them carefully, then he readjusted them and leaned forward, looking the young man over from head to foot, as if he had never until this moment seen more than his vague outlines.

"Um-m! You're nineteen years old, I believe!"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, then, an hour's delay won't be serious. Now you go back to your desk and send Mr. Murphy here. I'll let you know shortly whether Saturday night or this noon will be convenient."

It was perhaps a half-hour before lunch-time when Mr. Comer again called for Mitchell, greeting him with the gruff inquiry:

"See here, do you think I'm going to advance you from twelve to twenty-five a week at one clip?"

"No, sir."

"Humph! I'm not. I had a talk with Murphy. I think he's a liar, but I'm going to make it fifteen hundred a year and expenses. Now get busy and work your 'trade' for all it's worth."

Young Mitchell's knees wabbled, but, having learned the value of a black mask and a gun, he went through his victim thoroughly while he had him down.

"I'd like a traveling position the first of the year, sir, if you don't mind."

"All right! If you hold your present gait I'll give you the Western roads. Anything else you'd like? Well, then, git!"

That day Louis switched from the narrow-countered bakery-lunch route to regular standard-gauge restaurants; he ordered clothes like a bookmaker's bride and he sent a cubic foot of violets to Miss Harris. At dinner-time he patronized Mr. Gross so tantalizingly that the latter threatened to pull his nose out until it resembled a yard of garden hose.

The whole boarding-house was agog at Mitchell's good fortune and Miss Harris smiled on him in a manner reminiscent of the good old ante-bookkeeper—one might say "ante-vellum"—days. She hinted that Mr. Gross's company did not wholly satisfy her soul-hunger, and even confessed that she was lonely; but this was Mitchell's Rock Island evening, and although the frank surrender in Miss Harris's eyes caused him to gasp as if he were slowly settling into a barrel of ice-water, he tore himself from her side.

Louis's batting average would have reached one thousand had it not been for the Monon. Miss Day, the young lady there, had a vocabulary limited to "Hello," "Too high," and "Good-by," and it became particularly galling to learn that the fellow at James & Naughten's was pulling down the business, so Mitchell went to Murphy with a proposition which showed that his mental growth had kept pace with his financial advancement.

"You need a new stenographer," he declared.

"Oh, do I? Why do I need a new stenographer, Mr. Bones?"

"Well, it would be a good investment, and I know a corker."

"Who is she?"

"Miss Day, of the Monon."

"I didn't know you cared for Miss Day."

"I don't. That's the reason I want her to work for you."

Murphy coughed slightly, then he agreed. "You're learning the game. We'll give her a three-dollar raise, and take her on."

Shortly thereafter Mitchell began to get acquainted with the new Miss Monon along the right lines, and gave her Thursday nights. She was a great improvement over Miss Day; she was, in fact, quite different from any of the others. She was small and winsome, and she didn't care to run around. She liked her home, and so did Mitchell after he had called a few times. Before long he began to look forward eagerly to Thursday nights and Miss Monon's cozy corner with its red-plush cushions—reminiscent of chair-cars, to be sure—and its darkness illumined dimly by red and green signal lamps. Many a pleasant evening the two spent there, talking of locomotive planished iron, wire nails, and turnbuckles, and the late lunch Miss Monon served beat the system's regular buffet service a city block. Of course they lit the red fire in front of James & Naughten's and turned the green light Mitchell's way. He had the right of way on the Monon after that, and other salesmen were side-tracked.

But this was too easy to last. Human affairs never run smoothly; it is a man's ability to surmount the hummocks and the pressure ridges that enables him to penetrate to the polar regions of success. The first inkling of disaster came to Mitchell when Miss Dunlap began to tire of the gay life and chose to spend her Monday evenings at home, where they might be alone together. She spoke of the domestic habits she had acquired during her brief matrimonial experience; she boldly declared that marriage was the ideal state for any man, and that two could live as cheaply as one, although personally she saw no reason why a girl should quit work the instant she became a wife, did he? She confessed that Monday evenings had become so pleasant that if Louis could arrange to drop in on Fridays also, the week would be considerably brightened thereby and her whole disposition improved. Now Fridays were cinched tightly to the Big Four, but the young man dared not acknowledge it, so he confessed that all his evenings except Monday were taken up with night school, whereupon Miss Dunlap, in order to keep abreast of his mental development, decided to take a correspondence course in Esperanto.

It transpired also that his attentions toward the Lackawanna had been misconstrued, for one night when Phoebe bade him adieu in the vestibule she broke down and wept upon his shoulder, saying that his coldness hurt her. She confessed that a rate clerk in the freight department wanted to marry her, and she supposed she'd have to accept his dastardly proposal because a girl couldn't go on working all her life, could she? Then Miss Gratz, of the C. & E.I., following a red-letter night at Grand Opera, succeeded by a German pancake and a stein at the Edelweiss and a cab-ride home, took Louis gravely to task for his extravagance and hinted that he ought to have a permanent manager who took an interest in him, one who loved music as he did and whose tastes were simple and Teutonic.

When the literary lady of the Northwestern declined a trip to the White City and began to read Marion Crawford aloud to him Louis awoke to the gravity of the situation.

But before he had worked the matter out in his own mind that rate clerk of whom Miss Lackawanna had spoken dropped in at Comer & Mathison's, introduced himself to Mitchell and told him, with a degree of firmness which could not be ignored, that his attentions to Miss Phoebe Snow were distasteful. He did not state to whom. Louis's caller had the physical proportions of a "white hope," and he wasted few words. He had come to nail up a vacate notice, and he announced simply but firmly that Miss Snow's Wednesday evenings were to be considered open time thereafter, and if Mitchell elected to horn his way in it was a hundred-to-one shot that he'd have to give up solid foods for a month or more and take his nourishment through a glass tube.

Nor were the young man's troubles confined to the office. Miss Harris, it seemed, had seen him with a different lady each night she and Mr. Gross had been out, and had drawn her own conclusions, so, therefore, when he tried to talk to her she flared up and called him a dissipated roue, and threatened to have the head bookkeeper give him a thrashing if he dared to accost her again.

Now the various apartments where Mitchell had been calling, these past months, were opulently furnished with gifts from the representatives of the various railway supply houses of the city, each article being cunningly designed to cement in the mind of the owner a source of supply which, coupled with price and delivery, would make for good sales service. He was greatly surprised one day to receive a brass library lamp from the Santa Fe the initial destination of which had evidently been changed. Then came a mission hall-clock in the original package, redirected in the hand of Miss Gratz, of the C. & E.I., and one day the office-boy from the Lackawanna brought him a smoking-set for which Miss Phoebe Snow had no use. Gifts like these piled up rapidly, many of them bearing witness to the fact that their consignment originated from Mitchell's very rivals in the railroad trade. Judging from the quantity of stuff that ricocheted from the Santa Fe it was Miss Dunlap's evident desire to present him with a whole housekeeping equipment as quickly as possible. Louis's desk became loaded with ornaments, his room at Mrs. Green's became filled with nearly Wedgwood vases, candlesticks, and other bric-a-brac. He acquired six mission hall-clocks, a row of taborets stood outside of his door like Turkish sentinels, and his collection of ash-receivers was the best in Chicago.

Miss Harris continued to ignore him, however, and he learned with a jealous pang that she was giving Mr. Gross a gratuitous course of facial massage and scalp treatments. No longer did Mitchell entertain his trade; they entertained him. They tried to help him save his money, and every evening he was forced to battle for his freedom.

In desperation he finally went to Murphy begging quick promotion to a traveling position, but the Sales Manager told him there was no chance before the first of the year, then asked him why he had lost his grip on the Lackawanna business.

As a matter of fact, since Miss Phoebe's rate clerk had declared himself Mitchell had slipped a few Wednesday nights, trusting to hold the Lackawanna trade by virtue of his past performances, but he realized in the light of Murphy's catechism that eternal visiting is the price of safety. He sighed, therefore, and called up the lady, then apprehensively made a date.

That visit issued in disaster, as he had feared. The rate clerk, gifted with some subtle second sight, had divined his treachery and was waiting. He came to meet the caller gladly, like a paladin. Louis strove to disarm the big brute by the power of the human eye, then when that did not work he explained, politely, earnestly, that his weekly calls were but part and parcel of his business, and that there was nothing in his mind so remote as thoughts of matrimony. But the rate clerk was a stolid, a suspicious person, and he was gnawed by a low and common jealousy. Reason failing, they came together, amalgamating like two drops of quicksilver.

On the following morning Mitchell explained to Mr. Comer that in stepping out of the bathtub he had slipped and wrenched both shoulders, then while passing through the dark hall had put his face into mourning by colliding with an open door. His ankles he had sprained on the way down-town.

About nine-thirty Miss Dunlap called up, but not to leave an order. When she had finally rung off Louis looked dazedly at the wire to see if the insulation had melted. It seemed impossible that rubber and gutta-percha could withstand such heat as had come sizzling from the Santa Fe. From what the lady had said it required no great inductive powers to reason that the rate clerk had told all. Coming victorious to Miss Lackawanna's door to have his knuckles collodionized he had made known in coarse, triumphant language the base commercialism of his rival.

The result had been that Phoebe arose in her wrath. Just to verify the story she had called up the other railroad offices this morning, and the hideous truth had come out. It had come out like a herd of jack-rabbits ahead of a hound. Miss Dunlap was shouting mad, but Phoebe herself, when she called up, was indignant in a mean, sarcastic manner that hurt. The Northwestern rang Mitchell to say good-by forever and to hope his nose was broken; the Big Four promised that her brother, who was a puddler in the South Chicago steel mills, would run in and finish the rate clerk's job; Miss Gratz, of the C.&E.I., was tearfully plaintive and, being German, spoke of suicide. Of course all business relations with these offices were at an end.

During that whole day but one 'phone order came, and that was from Miss Monon. Mitchell had been steeling himself to hear from her, but it seemed that she took the whole thing as rather a good joke. She told him she had known all the time why he came to see her, and when he reminded her that it was Thursday she invited him to call if he thought it worth while.

When he saw Miss Harris at supper-time and undertook to explain his black eyes she assured him coldly that he and his ebony gig-lamps mattered nothing in her young life, as evidence of which she flashed a magnificent three-quarter carat diamond solitaire on her third finger. She and Mr. Gross expected to be married inside of two or three years if all went well, she told him.

At eight o'clock, disguised behind a pair of blue goggles, Louis headed for Miss Monon's door, glad that the cozy corner was so dimly lighted. When he arrived she bathed his battle-scarred features with hamamelis, which is just the same as Pond's Extract, but doesn't cost so much, and told him the other girls had acted foolishly. She was very sweet and gentle with him and young Mitchell, imperfect as was his vision, saw something in her he had never seen before.

A week went by, during which it seemed that all the railroads except the Monon had suddenly gone out of business. It was as if a strike had been declared. Another week passed and Mitchell's sales were scarcely noticeable, so Mr. Comer called him in to ask:

"Is your 'phone disconnected?"

"No, sir."

"Do you know the price of our goods?"

"Yes, sir."

"Don't you sleep well at home?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then what has become of those pick-ups?"

"I seem to have lost—my trade."

"Your 'trade'! Bah! Young man, you've been dissipating. That expense account turned your head. You've been blowing in our money on your friends and you've let your customers go. If you can't hold the railroad business we'll get some fellow who can. Cut out your sewing-circle wine suppers and your box parties to the North Shore debutantes and get busy. You've got a week to make good. One week."

There wasn't the slightest chance, and Mitchell told Miss Monon so when Thursday came around. He told her all about that promised position on the road and what it meant to him, and then he told her that beginning Monday he'd have to hunt a new berth at twelve dollars per. She was very quiet, very sympathetic—so sympathetic, in fact, that he told her some other things which no young man on a diminishing salary should tell. She said little at the moment, but she did considerable thinking, and she got busy on her 'phone early the next morning. The first number she called was the Santa Fe's. When she had finished talking with Miss Dunlap that hempen-haired sentimentalist was dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief and blowing her nose, assuring Miss Monon, at the same time, that she was a dear and that it was all right now that she knew the truth. Miss Monon blushed prettily, thanked her, and confessed that she had felt it coming on for some time. Thereupon they took turns calling the others, from the Big Four to the C.&E.I., with the result that Mitchell's wire began to heat up.

Phoebe Snow called him to say that she hadn't meant what she said, that he was a good old scout, and that the rate clerk was sorry also, and wanted to stand treat for a Dutch lunch. Then she left an order for a ton and a half of engine bolts.

Miss Gratz cried a little when she heard Mitchell's voice and told him to make his own price on forty kegs of washers and suit himself about delivery.

Miss Dunlap confessed that it was her pride which had spoken, and, anyhow, she knew altogether too much about marriage to take another chance. She'd rather have one man friend than three husbands.

One by one the flock returned, and Saturday night Mitchell sent five pounds of chocolates and a sheaf of red roses to the one who had made it all come out right. He got his share of business after that, and when the holidays came they brought him his promotion.

Murphy, who knew most of the facts, was the first to congratulate him. "Jove!" he said, "that little Monon lady saved your bacon, didn't she? By. the way, you never told me what her name was."

Young Mitchell's cheeks assumed a shell-pink shade as he replied: "It doesn't matter what her name was, it's Mitchell now. We were married yesterday and—all the roads were represented at the wedding."



WITH BRIDGES BURNED

Louis Mitchell knew what the telegram meant, even though it was brief and cryptic. He had been expecting something of the sort ever since the bottom dropped out of the steel business and prices tobogganed forty dollars a ton. Nevertheless, it came as an undeniable shock, for he had hoped the firm would keep him on in spite of hard times. He wondered, as he sadly pocketed the yellow sheet, whether he had in him the makings of a good life-insurance agent, or if he had not better "join out" with a medicine show. This message led him to think his talents must lie along the latter line. Certainly they did not lie in the direction of metal supplies.

He had plenty of time to think the situation over, however, for it is a long jump from Butte to Chicago; when he arrived at the latter place he was certain of only one thing, he would not stand a cut in salary. Either Comer & Mathison would have to fire him outright or keep him on at his present wage; he would not compromise as the other salesmen had done and were doing.

Twenty-five hundred a year is a liberal piece of money where people raise their own vegetables, but to a man traveling in the West it is about equal to "no pair." Given two hundred dollars a month and a fair expense account a salesman can plow quite a respectable furrow around Plymouth Rock, but out where they roll their r's and monogram their live stock he can't make a track. Besides the loss of prestige and all that went with it, there was another reason why young Mitchell could not face a cut. He had a wife, and she was too new, too wonderful; she admired him too greatly to permit of such a thing. She might, she doubtless would, lose confidence in him if he took a step backward, and that confidence of hers was the most splendid thing in Mitchell's life. No, if Comer & Mathison wanted to make any change, they would have to promote him. Ten minutes with the "old man," however, served to jar this satisfactory determination to its foundation. Mr. Comer put the situation clearly, concisely.