The Colonel finally carried the day. They went at it next morning, and, as the projector of the work had privately predicted, a better spirit prevailed in the camp for some time. But here were five men, only one of whom had had any of the steadying grace of stiff discipline in his life, men of haphazard education, who had "chucked" more or less easy berths in a land of many creature comforts ... for this—to fell and haul birch and fir trees in an Arctic climate on half-rations! It began to be apparent that the same spirit was invading the forest that had possession of the camp; two, or at most three, did the work, and the rest shirked, got snow-blindness and rheumatism, and let the others do his share, counting securely, nevertheless, on his fifth of the proceeds, just as he counted (no matter what proportion he had contributed) on his full share of the common stock of food.

"I came out here a Communist—" said the Boy one day to the Colonel.

"And an agnostic," smiled the older man.

"Oh, I'm an agnostic all right, now and for ever. But this winter has cured my faith in Communism."

Early February brought not only lengthening daylight, but a radical change in the weather. The woodsmen worked in their shirt-sleeves, perspired freely, and said in the innocence of their hearts, "If winter comes early up here, spring does the same." The whole hillside was one slush, and the snow melting on the ill-made Little Cabin roof brought a shower-bath into the upper bunk.

Few things in nature so surely stir the pulse of man as the untimely coming of a few spring days, that have lost their way in the calendar, and wandered into winter. No trouble now to get the Big Chimney men away from the fireside. They held up their bloodless faces in the faint sunshine, and their eyes, with the pupils enlarged by the long reign of night, blinked feebly, like an owl's forced to face the morning.

There were none of those signs in the animal world outside, of premature stir and cheerful awaking, that in other lands help the illusion that winter lies behind, but there was that even more stimulating sweet air abroad, that subtle mixture of sun and yielding frost, that softened wind that comes blowing across the snow, still keen to the cheek, but subtly reviving to the sensitive nostril, and caressing to the eyes. The Big Chimney men drew deep breaths, and said in their hearts the battle was over and won.

Kaviak, for ever following at Mac's heels "like a rale Irish tarrier," found his allegiance waver in these stirring, blissful days, if ever Farva so belied character and custom as to swing an axe for any length of time. Plainly out of patience, Kaviak would throw off the musk-rat coat, and run about in wet mucklucks and a single garment—uphill, downhill, on important errands which he confided to no man.

It is part of the sorcery of such days that men's thoughts, like birds', turn to other places, impatient of the haven that gave them shelter in rough weather overpast. The Big Chimney men leaned on their axes and looked north, south, east, west.

Then the Colonel would give a little start, turn about, lift his double-bitter, and swing it frontier fashion, first over one shoulder, then over the other, striking cleanly home each time, working with a kind of splendid rhythm more harmonious, more beautiful to look at, than most of the works of men. This was, perhaps, the view of his comrades, for they did a good deal of looking at the Colonel. He said he was a modest man and didn't like it, and Mac, turning a little rusty under the gibe, answered:

"Haven't you got the sense to see we've cut all the good timber just round here?" and again he turned his eyes to the horizon line.

"Mac's right," said the Boy; and even the Colonel stood still a moment, and they all looked away to that land at the end of the world where the best materials are for the building of castles—it's the same country so plainly pointed out by the Rainbow's End, and never so much as in the springtime does it lure men with its ancient promise.

"Come along, Colonel; let's go and look for real timber—"

"And let's find it nearer water-level—where the steamers can see it right away."

"What about the kid?"

"Me come," said Kaviak, with a highly obliging air.

"No; you stay at home."

"No; go too."

"Go too, thou babbler! Kaviak's a better trail man than some I could mention."

"We'll have to carry him home," objected Potts.

"Now don't tell us you'll do any of the carryin', or we'll lose confidence in you, Potts."

The trail was something awful, but on their Canadian snowshoes they got as far as an island, six miles off. One end of it was better wooded than any easily accessible place they had seen.

"Why, this is quite like real spruce," said the Boy, and O'Flynn admitted that even in California "these here would be called 'trees' wid no intintion o' bein' sarcaustic."

So they cut holes in the ice, and sounded for the channel.

"Yes, sir, the steamers can make a landin' here, and here's where we'll have our wood-rack."

They went home in better spirits than they had been in since that welter of gold had lain on the Big Cabin table.

* * * * *

But a few days sufficed to wear the novelty off the new wood camp for most of the party. Potts and O'Flynn set out in the opposite direction one morning with a hand-sled, and provisions to last several days. They were sick of bacon and beans, and were "goin' huntin'." No one could deny that a moose or even a grouse—anything in the shape of fresh meat—was sufficiently needed. But Potts and O'Flynn were really sick and sore from their recent slight attack of wood-felling. They were after bigger game, too, as well as grouse, and a few days "off." It had turned just enough colder to glaze the trail and put it in fine condition. They went down the river to the Oklahoma, were generously entertained by Captain Rainey, and learned that, with earlier contracts on his hands, he did not want more wood from them than they had already corded. They returned to the camp without game, but with plenty of whisky, and information that freed them from the yoke of labour, and from the lash of ironic comment. In vain the Colonel urged that the Oklahoma was not the only steamer plying the Yukon, that with the big rush of the coming season the traffic would be enormous, and a wood-pile as good as a gold mine. The cause was lost.

"You won't get us to make galley-slaves of ourselves on the off-chance of selling. Rainey says that wood camps have sprung up like mushrooms all along the river. The price of wood will go down to—"

"All along the river! There isn't one between us and Andreievsky, nor between here and Holy Cross."

But it was no use. The travellers pledged each other in Oklahoma whisky, and making a common cause once more, the original Trio put in a night of it. The Boy and the Colonel turned into their bunks at eleven o'clock. They were roused in the small hours, by Kaviak's frightened crying, and the noise of angry voices.

"You let the kid alone."

"Well, it's mesilf that'll take the liberty o' mintionin' that I ain't goin' to stand furr another minyit an Esquimer's cuttin' down my rations. Sure it's a fool I've been!"

"You can't help that," Mac chopped out.

"Say Mac," said Potts in a drunken voice, "I'm talkin' to you like a friend. You want to get a move on that kid."

"Kaviak's goin' won't make any more difference than a fly's."

The other two grumbled incoherently.

"But I tell you what would make a difference: if you two would quit eatin' on the sly—out o' meal-times."

"Be the Siven!"

"You lie!" A movement, a stool overturned, and the two men in the bunks were struck broad awake by the smart concussion of a gun-shot. Nobody was hurt, and between them they disarmed Potts, and turned the Irishman out to cool off in his own cabin. It was all over in a minute. Kaviak, reassured, curled down to sleep again. Mac and Potts stretched themselves on the buffalo-robe half under the table, and speedily fell to snoring. The Boy put on some logs. He and the Colonel sat and watched the sparks.

"It's a bad business."

"It can't go on," says the Colonel; "but Mac's right: Kaviak's being here isn't to blame. They—we, too—are like a lot of powder-cans."

The Boy nodded. "Any day a spark, and biff! some of us are in a blaze, and wh-tt! bang! and some of us are in Kingdom Come."

"I begin to be afraid to open my lips," said the Colonel. "We all are; don't you notice?"

"Yes. I wonder why we came."

"You had no excuse," said the elder man almost angrily.

"Same excuse as you."

The Colonel shook his head.

"Exactly," maintained the Boy. "Tired of towns and desk-work, and—and—" The Boy shifted about on his wooden stool, and held up his hands to the reviving blaze. "Life owes us steady fellows one year of freedom, anyhow—one year to make ducks and drakes of. Besides, we've all come to make our fortunes. Doesn't every mother's son of us mean to find a gold-mine in the spring when we get to the Klondyke—eh?" And he laughed again, and presently he yawned, and tumbled back into his bunk. But he put his head out in a moment. "Aren't you going to bed?"

"Yes." The Colonel stood up.

"Did you know Father Wills went by, last night, when those fellows began to row about getting out the whisky?"

"No."

"He says there's another stampede on."

"Where to?"

"Koyukuk this time."

"Why didn't he come in?"

"Awful hurry to get to somebody that sent for him. Funny fellas these Jesuits. They believe all those odd things they teach."

"So do other men," said the Colonel, curtly.

"Well, I've lived in a Christian country all my life, but I don't know that I ever saw Christianity practised till I went up the Yukon to Holy Cross."

"I must say you're complimentary to the few other Christians scattered about the world."

"Don't get mifft, Colonel. I've known plenty of people straight as a die, and capital good fellows. I've seen them do very decent things now and then. But with these Jesuit missionaries—Lord! there's no let up to it."

No answer from the Protestant Colonel. Presently the Boy in a sleepy voice added elegantly:

"No Siree! The Jesuits go the whole hog!"

* * * * *

Winter was down on the camp again. The whole world was hard as iron. The men kept close to the Big Chimney all day long, and sat there far into the small hours of the morning, saying little, heavy-eyed and sullen. The dreaded insomnia of the Arctic had laid hold on all but the Colonel. Even his usually unbroken repose was again disturbed one night about a week later. Some vague sort of sound or movement in the room—Kaviak on a raid?—or—wasn't that the closing of a door?

"Kaviak!" He put his hand down and felt the straight hair of the Esquimaux in the under bunk. "Potts! Who's there?" He half sat up. "Boy! Did you hear that, Boy?"

He leaned far down over the side and saw distinctly by the fire-light there was nobody but Kaviak in the under bunk.

The Colonel was on his legs in a flash, putting his head through his parki and drawing on his mucklucks. He didn't wait to cross and tie the thongs. A presentiment of evil was strong upon him. Outside in the faint star-light he thought a dim shape was passing down towards the river.

"Who's that? Hi, there! Stop, or I'll shoot!" He hadn't brought his gun, but the ruse worked.

"Don't shoot!" came back the voice of the Boy.

The Colonel stumbled down the bank in the snow, and soon stood by the shape. The Boy was dressed for a journey. His Arctic cap was drawn down over his ears and neck. The wolf-skin fringe of his parki hood stood out fiercely round the defiant young face. Wound about one of his seal-skin mittens was the rope of the new hand-sled he'd been fashioning so busily of nights by the camp fire. His two blankets were strapped on the sled, Indian fashion, along with a gunny sack and his rifle.

The two men stood looking angrily at each other a moment, and then the Colonel politely inquired:

"What in hell are you doing?"

"Goin' to Minook."

"The devil you are!"

"Yes, the devil I am!"

They stood measuring each other in the dim light, till the Colonel's eyes fell on the loaded sled. The Boy's followed.

"I've only taken short rations for two weeks. I left a statement in the cabin; it's about a fifth of what's my share, so there's no need of a row."

"What are you goin' for?"

"Why, to be first in the field, and stake a gold-mine, of course."

The Colonel laid a rough hand on the Boy's shoulder. He shook it off impatiently, and before the older man could speak:

"Look here, let's talk sense. Somebody's got to go, or there'll be trouble. Potts says Kaviak. But what difference would Kaviak make? I've been afraid you'd get ahead of me. I've watched you for a week like a hawk watches a chicken. But it's clear I'm the one to go."

He pulled up the rope of the sled, and his little cargo lurched towards him. The Colonel stepped in front of him.

"Boy—" he began, but something was the matter with his voice; he got no further.

"I'm the youngest," boasted the other, "and I'm the strongest, and—I'm the hungriest."

The Colonel found a perturbed and husky voice in which to say:

"I didn't know you were such a Christian."

"Nothin' o' the sort."

"What's this but—"

"Why, it's just—just my little scheme."

"You're no fool. You know as well as I do you've got the devil's own job in hand."

"Somebody's got to go," he repeated doggedly.

"Look here," said the Colonel, "you haven't impressed me as being tired of life."

"Tired of life!" The young eyes flashed in that weird aureole of long wolf-hair. "Tired of life! Well, I should just pretty nearly think I wasn't."

"H'm! Then if it isn't Christianity, it must be because you're young."

"Golly, man! it's because I'm hungry—HUNGRY! Great Jehosaphat! I could eat an ox!"

"And you leave your grub behind, to be eaten by a lot of—"

"I can't stand here argyfying with the thermometer down to—" The Boy began to drag the sled over the snow.

"Come back into the cabin."

"No."

"Come with me, I say; I've got something to propose." Again the Colonel stood in front, barring the way. "Look here," he went on gently, "are you a friend of mine?"

"Oh, so-so," growled the Boy. But after looking about him for an angry second or two, he flung down the rope of his sled, walked sulkily uphill, and kicked off his snow-shoes at the door of the cabin, all with the air of one who waits, but is not baulked of his purpose. They went in and stripped off their furs.

"Now see here: if you've made up your mind to light out, I'm not going to oppose you."

"Why didn't you say anything as sensible as that out yonder?"

"Because I won't be ready to go along till to-morrow."

"You?"

"Yep."

There was a little silence.

"I wish you wouldn't, Colonel."

"It's dangerous alone—not for two."

"Yes, it IS dangerous, and you know it."

"I'm goin' along, laddie." Seeing the Boy look precious grave and harassed: "What's the matter?"

"I'd hate awfully for anything to happen to you."

The Colonel laughed. "Much obliged, but it matters uncommon little if I do drop in my tracks."

"You be blowed!"

"You see I've got a pretty bad kind of a complaint, anyhow." The Boy leaned over in the firelight and scanned the Colonel's face.

"What's wrong?"

The Colonel smiled a queer little one-sided smile. "I've been out o' kelter nearly ten years."

"Oh, that's all right. You'll go on for another thirty if you stay where you are till the ice goes out."

The Colonel bent his head, and stared at the smooth-trodden floor at the edge of the buffalo-skin. "To tell the truth, I'll be glad to go, not only because of—" He hitched his shoulders towards the corner whence came the hoarse and muffled breathing of the Denver clerk. "I'll be glad to have something to tire me out, so I'll sleep—sleep too sound to dream. That's what I came for, not to sit idle in a God-damn cabin and think—think—" He got up suddenly and strode the tiny space from fire to door, a man transformed, with hands clenching and dark face almost evil. "They say the men who winter up here either take to drink or go mad. I begin to see it is so. It's no place to do any forgetting in." He stopped suddenly before the Boy with glittering eyes. "It's the country where your conscience finds you out."

"That religion of yours is makin' you morbid, Colonel." The Boy spoke with the detached and soothing air of a sage.

"You don't know what you're talking about." He turned sharply away. The Boy relapsed into silence. The Colonel in his renewed prowling brought up against the wooden crane. He stood looking down into the fire. Loud and regular sounded the sleeping man's breathing in the quiet little room.

"I did a wrong once to a woman—ten years ago," said the Colonel, speaking to the back-log—"although I loved her." He raised a hand to his eyes with a queer choking sound. "I loved her," he repeated, still with his back to the Boy. "By-and-by I could have righted it, but she—she wasn't the kind to hang about and wait on a man's better nature when once he'd shown himself a coward. She skipped the country." He leaned his head against the end of the shelf over the fire, and said no more.

"Go back in the spring, find out where she is, and—"

"I've spent every spring and every summer, every fall and every winter till this one, trying to do just that thing."

"You can't find her?"

"Nobody can find her."

"She's dead—"

"She's not dead!"

The Boy involuntarily shrank back; the Colonel looked ready to smash him. The action recalled the older man to himself.

"I feel sure she isn't dead," he said more quietly, but still trembling. "No, no; she isn't dead. She had some money of her own, and she went abroad. I followed her. I heard of her in Paris, in Rome. I saw her once in a droschky in Vienna; there I lost the trail. Her people said she'd gone to Japan. I went to Japan. I'm sure she wasn't in the islands. I've spent my life since trying to find her—writing her letters that always come back—trying—" His voice went out like a candle-wick suddenly dying in the socket. Only the sleeper was audible for full five minutes. Then, as though he had paused only a comma's space, the Colonel went on: "I've been trying to put the memory of her behind me, as a sane man should. But some women leave an arrow sticking in your flesh that you can never pull out. You can only jar against it, and cringe under the agony of the reminder all your life long.... Bah! Go out, Boy, and bring in your sled."

And the Boy obeyed without a word.

Two days after, three men with a child stood in front of the larger cabin, saying good-bye to their two comrades who were starting out on snow-shoes to do a little matter of 625 miles of Arctic travelling, with two weeks' scant provisioning, some tea and things for trading, bedding, two rifles, and a kettle, all packed on one little hand-sled.

There had been some unexpected feeling, and even some real generosity shown at the last, on the part of the three who were to profit by the exodus—falling heir thereby to a bigger, warmer cabin and more food.

O'Flynn was moved to make several touching remonstrances. It was a sign of unwonted emotion on Mac's part that he gave up arguing (sacrificing all the delight of a set debate), and simply begged and prayed them not to be fools, not to fly in the face of Providence.

But Potts was made of sterner stuff. Besides, the thing was too good to be true. O'Flynn, when he found they were not to be dissuaded, solemnly presented each with a little bottle of whisky. Nobody would have believed O'Flynn would go so far as that. Nor could anyone have anticipated that close-fisted Mac would give the Boy his valuable aneroid barometer and compass, or that Potts would be so generous with his best Virginia straight-cut, filling the Colonel's big pouch without so much as a word.

"It's a crazy scheme," says he, shaking the giant Kentuckian by the hand, "and you won't get thirty miles before you find it out."

"Call it an expedition to Anvik," urged Mac. "Load up there with reindeer meat, and come back. If we don't get some fresh meat soon, we'll be having scurvy."

"What you're furr doin'," says O'Flynn for the twentieth time, "has niver been done, not ayven be Indians. The prastes ahl say so."

"So do the Sour-doughs," said Mac. "It isn't as if you had dogs."

"Good-bye," said the Colonel, and the men grasped hands.

Potts shook hands with the Boy as heartily as though that same hand had never half throttled him in the cause of a missing hatchet.

"Good-bye, Kiddie. I bequeath you my share o' syrup."

"Good-bye; meet you in the Klondyke!"

"Good-bye. Hooray for the Klondyke in June!"

"Klondyke in June! Hoop-la!"

The two travellers looked back, laughing and nodding, as jolly as you please. The Boy stooped, made a snow-ball, and fired it at Kaviak. The child ducked, chuckling, and returned as good as he got. His loosely packed ball broke in a splash on the back of the Boy's parki, and Kaviak was loudly cheered.

Still, as they went forward, they looked back. The Big Chimney wore an air wondrous friendly, and the wide, white world looked coldly at them, with small pretence of welcome or reward.

"I don't believe I ever really knew how awful jolly the Big Chimney was—till this minute."

The Colonel smiled. "Hardly like myself, to think whatever else I see, I'll never see that again."

"Better not boast."

The Colonel went on in front, breaking trail in the newfallen snow, the Boy pulling the sled behind him as lightly as if its double burden were a feather.

"They look as if they thought it'd be a picnic," says Mac, grimly.

"I wonder be the Siven Howly Pipers! will we iver see ayther of 'em again."

"If they only stay a couple o' nights at Anvik," said Potts, with gloomy foreboding, "they could get back here inside a week."

"No," answered Mac, following the two figures with serious eyes, "they may be dead inside a week, but they won't be back here."

And Potts felt his anxiety eased. A man who had mined at Caribou ought to know.



CHAPTER X

PRINCESS MUCKLUCK

"We all went to Tibbals to see the Kinge, who used my mother and my aunt very gratiouslie; but we all saw a great chaunge betweene the fashion of the Court as it was now, and of y in ye Queene's, for we were all lowzy by sittinge in Sr Thomas Erskin's chamber." Memoir: Anne Countess of Dorset, 1603.

It was the 26th of February, that first day that they "hit the Long Trail."

Temperature only about twenty degrees, the Colonel thought, and so little wind it had the effect of being warmer. Trail in fair condition, weather gray and steady. Never men in better spirits. To have left the wrangling and the smouldering danger of the camp behind, that alone, as the Boy said, was "worth the price of admission." Exhilarating, too, to men of their temperament, to have cut the Gordian knot of the difficulty by risking themselves on this unprecedented quest for peace and food. Gold, too? Oh, yes—with a smile to see how far that main object had drifted into the background—they added, "and for gold."

They believed they had hearkened well to the counsel that bade them "travel light." "Remember, every added ounce is against you." "Nobody in the North owns anything that's heavy," had been said in one fashion or another so often that it lost its ironic sound in the ears of men who had come so far to carry away one of the heaviest things under the sun.

The Colonel and the Boy took no tent, no stove, not even a miner's pick and pan. These last, General Lighter had said, could be obtained at Minook; and "there isn't a cabin on the trail," Dillon had added, "without 'em."

For the rest, the carefully-selected pack on the sled contained the marmot-skin, woollen blankets, a change of flannels apiece, a couple of sweaters, a Norfolk jacket, and several changes of foot-gear. This last item was dwelt on earnestly by all. "Keep your feet dry," John Dillon had said, "and leave the rest to God Almighty." They were taking barely two weeks' rations, and a certain amount of stuff to trade with the up-river Indians, when their supplies should be gone. They carried a kettle, an axe, some quinine, a box of the carbolic ointment all miners use for foot-soreness, O'Flynn's whisky, and two rifles and ammunition. In spite of having eliminated many things that most travellers would count essential, they found their load came to a little over two hundred pounds. But every day would lessen it, they told each other with a laugh, and with an inward misgiving, lest the lightening should come all too quickly.

They had seen in camp that winter so much of the frailty of human temper that, although full of faith by now in each other's native sense and fairness, they left nothing to a haphazard division of labour. They parcelled out the work of the day with absolute impartiality. To each man so many hours of going ahead to break trail, if the snow was soft, while the other dragged the sled; or else while one pulled in front, the other pushed from behind, in regular shifts by the watch, turn and turn about. The Colonel had cooked all winter, so it was the Boy's turn at that—the Colonel's to decide the best place to camp, because it was his affair to find seasoned wood for fuel, his to build the fire in the snow on green logs laid close together—his to chop enough wood to cook breakfast the next morning. All this they had arranged before they left the Big Chimney.

That they did not cover more ground that first day was a pure chance, not likely to recur, due to an unavoidable loss of time at Pymeut.

Knowing the fascination that place exercised over his companion, the Colonel called a halt about seven miles off from the Big Chimney, that they might quickly despatch a little cold luncheon they carried in their pockets, and push on without a break till supper.

"We've got no time to waste at Pymeut," observes the Colonel significantly.

"I ain't achin' to stop at Pymeut," says his pardner with a superior air, standing up, as he swallowed his last mouthful of cold bacon and corn-bread, and cheerfully surveyed the waste. "Who says it's cold, even if the wind is up? And the track's bully. But see here, Colonel, you mustn't go thinkin' it's smooth glare-ice, like this, all the way."

"Oh, I was figurin' that it would be." But the Boy paid no heed to the irony.

"And it's a custom o' the country to get the wind in your face, as a rule, whichever way you go."

"Well, I'm not complainin' as yet."

"Reckon you needn't if you're blown like dandelion-down all the way to Minook. Gee! the wind's stronger! Say, Colonel, let's rig a sail."

"Foolishness."

"No, sir. We'll go by Pymeut in an ice-boat, lickety split. And it'll be a good excuse for not stopping, though I think we ought to say good-bye to Nicholas."

This view inclined the Colonel to think better of an ice-boat. He had once crossed the Bay of Toronto in that fashion, and began to wonder if such a mode of progression applied to sleds might not aid largely in solving the Minook problem.

While he was wondering the Boy unlashed the sled-load, and pulled off the canvas cover as the Colonel came back with his mast. Between them, with no better tools than axe, jack-knives, and a rope, and with fingers freezing in the south wind, they rigged the sail.

The fact that they had this increasingly favourable wind on their very first day showed that they were specially smiled on by the great natural forces. The superstitious feeling that only slumbers in most breasts, that Mother Nature is still a mysterious being, who has her favourites whom she guards, her born enemies whom she baulks, pursues, and finally overwhelms, the age-old childishness stirred pleasantly in both men, and in the younger came forth unabashed in speech:

"I tell you the omens are good! This expedition's goin' to get there." Then, with the involuntary misgiving that follows hard upon such boasting, he laughed uneasily and added, "I mean to sacrifice the first deer's tongue I don't want myself, to Yukon Inua; but here's to the south wind!" He turned some corn-bread crumbs out of his pocket, and saw, delighted, how the gale, grown keener, snatched eagerly at them and hurried them up the trail. The ice-boat careened and strained eagerly to sail away. The two gold-seekers, laughing like schoolboys, sat astride the pack; the Colonel shook out the canvas, and they scudded off up the river like mad. The great difficulty was the steering; but it was rip-roaring fun, the Boy said, and very soon there were natives running down to the river, to stare open-mouthed at the astounding apparition, to point and shout something unintelligible that sounded like "Muchtaravik!"

"Why, it's the Pymeuts! Pardner, we'll be in Minook by supper-ti—"

The words hadn't left his lips when he saw, a few yards in front of them, a faint cloud of steam rising up from the ice—that dim danger-signal that flies above an air-hole. The Colonel, never noticing, was heading straight for the ghastly trap.

"God, Colonel! Blow-hole!" gasped the Boy.

The Colonel simply rolled off the pack turning over and over on the ice, but keeping hold of the rope.

The sled swerved, turned on her side, and slid along with a sound of snapping and tearing.

While they were still headed straight for the hole, the Boy had gathered himself for a clear jump to the right, but the sled's sudden swerve to the left broke his angle sharply. He was flung forward on the new impetus, spun over the smooth surface, swept across the verge and under the cloud, clutching wildly at the ragged edge of ice as he went down.

All Pymeut had come rushing pell-mell.

The Colonel was gathering himself up and looking round in a dazed kind of way as Nicholas flashed by. Just beyond, in that yawning hole, fully ten feet wide by fifteen long, the Boy's head appeared an instant, and then was lost like something seen in a dream. Some of the Pymeuts with quick knives were cutting the canvas loose. One end was passed to Nicholas; he knotted it to his belt, and went swiftly, but gingerly, forward nearer the perilous edge. He had flung himself down on his stomach just as the Boy rose again. Nicholas lurched his body over the brink, his arms outstretched, straining farther, farther yet, till it seemed as if only the counterweight of the rest of the population at the other end of the canvas prevented his joining the Boy in the hole. But Nicholas had got a grip of him, and while two of the Pymeuts hung on to the half-stunned Colonel to prevent his adding to the complication, Nicholas, with a good deal of trouble in spite of Yagorsha's help, hauled the Boy out of the hole and dragged him up on the ice-edge. The others applied themselves lustily to their end of the canvas, and soon they were all at a safe distance from the yawning danger.

The Boy's predominant feeling had been one of intense surprise. He looked round, and a hideous misgiving seized him.

"Anything the matter with you, Colonel?" His tone was so angry that, as they stared at each other, they both fell to laughing.

"Well, I rather thought that was what I was going to say"; and Kentucky heaved a deep sigh of relief.

The Boy's teeth began to chatter, and his clothes were soon freezing on him. They got him up off the ice, and Nicholas and the sturdy old Pymeut story-teller, Yagorsha, walked him, or ran him rather, the rest of the way to Pymeut, for they were not so near the village as the travellers had supposed on seeing nearly the whole male population. The Colonel was not far behind, and several of the bucks were bringing the disabled sled. Before reaching the Kachime, they were joined by the women and children, Muckluck much concerned at the sight of her friend glazed in ice from head to heel. Nicholas and Yagorsha half dragged, half pulled him into the Kachime. The entire escort followed, even two or three very dirty little boys—everybody, except the handful of women and girls left at the mouth of the underground entrance and the two men who had run on to make a fire. It was already smoking viciously as though the seal-lamps weren't doing enough in that line, when Yagorsha and Nicholas laid the half-frozen traveller on the sleeping-bench.

The Pymeuts knew that the great thing was to get the ice-stiffened clothes off as quickly as might be, and that is to be done expeditiously only by cutting them off. In vain the Boy protested. Recklessly they sawed and cut and stripped him, rubbed him and wrapped him in a rabbit-blanket, the fur turned inside, and a wolverine skin over that. The Colonel at intervals poured small doses of O'Flynn's whisky down the Boy's throat in spite of his unbecoming behaviour, for he was both belligerent and ungrateful, complaining loudly of the ruin of his clothes with only such intermission as the teeth-chattering, swallowing, and rude handling necessitated.

"I didn't like—bein' in—that blow-hole. (Do you know—it was so cold—it burnt!) But I'd rather—be—in a blow-hole—than—br-r-r! Blow-hole isn't so s-s-melly as these s-s-kins!'

"You better be glad you've got a whole skin of your own and ain't smellin' brimstone," said the Colonel, pouring a little more whisky down the unthankful throat. "Pretty sort o' Klondyker you are—go and get nearly drowned first day out!" Several Pymeut women came in presently and joined the men at the fire, chattering low and staring at the Colonel and the Boy.

"I can't go—to the Klondyke—naked—no, nor wrapped in a rabbit-skin—like Baby Bunting—"

Nicholas was conferring with the Colonel and offering to take him to Ol' Chief's.

"Oh, yes; Ol' Chief got two clo'es. You come. Me show"; and they crawled out one after the other.

"You pretty near dead that time," said one of the younger women conversationally.

"That's right. Who are you, anyway?"

"Me Anna—Yagorsha's daughter."

"Oh, yes, I thought I'd seen you before." She seemed to be only a little older than Muckluck, but less attractive, chiefly on account of her fat and her look of ill-temper. She was on specially bad terms with a buck they called Joe, and they seemed to pass all their time abusing one another.

The Boy craned his neck and looked round. Except just where he was lying, the Pymeut men and women were crowded together, on that side of the Kachime, at his head and at his feet, thick as herrings on a thwart. They all leaned forward and regarded him with a beady-eyed sympathy. He had never been so impressed by the fact before, but all these native people, even in their gentlest moods, frowned in a chronic perplexity and wore their wide mouths open. He reflected that he had never seen one that didn't, except Muckluck.

Here she was, crawling in with a tin can.

"Got something there to eat?"

The rescued one craned his head as far as he could.

"Too soon," she said, showing her brilliant teeth in the fire-light. She set the tin down, looked round, a little embarrassed, and stirred the fire, which didn't need it.

"Well"—he put his chin down under the rabbit-skin once more—"how goes the world, Princess?"

She flashed her quick smile again and nodded reassuringly. "You stay here now?"

"No; goin' up river."

"What for?" She spoke disapprovingly.

"Want to get an Orange Grove."

"Find him up river?"

"Hope so."

"I think I go, too"; and all the grave folk, sitting so close on the sleeping-bench, stretched their wide mouths wider still, smiling good-humouredly.

"You better wait till summer."

"Oh!" She lifted her head from the fire as one who takes careful note of instructions. "Nex' summer?"

"Well, summer's the time for squaws to travel."

"I come nex' summer," she said.

By-and-by Nicholas returned with a new parki and a pair of wonderful buckskin breeches—not like anything worn by the Lower River natives, or by the coast-men either: well cut, well made, and handsomely fringed down the outside of the leg where an officer's gold stripe goes.

"Chaparejos!" screamed the Boy. "Where'd you get 'em?"

"Ol' Chief—he ketch um."

"They're bully!" said the Boy, holding the despised rabbit-skin under his chin with both hands, and craning excitedly over it. He felt that his fortunes were looking up. Talk about a tide in the affairs of men! Why, a tide that washes up to a wayfarer's feet a pair o' chaparejos like that—well! legs so habited would simply have to carry a fella on to fortune. He lay back on the sleeping-bench with dancing eyes, while the raw whisky hummed in his head. In the dim light of seal-lamps vague visions visited him of stern and noble chiefs out of the Leather Stocking Stories of his childhood—men of daring, whose legs were invariably cased in buck-skin with dangling fringes. But the dashing race was not all Indian, nor all dead. Famous cowboys reared before him on bucking bronchos, their leg-fringes streaming on the blast, and desperate chaps who held up coaches and potted Wells Fargo guards. Anybody must needs be a devil of a fellow who went about in "shaps," as his California cousins called chaparejos. Even a peaceable fella like himself, not out after gore at all, but after an Orange Grove—even he, once he put on—He laughed out loud at his childishness, and then grew grave. "Say, Nicholas, what's the tax?"

"Hey?"

"How much?"

"Oh, your pardner—he pay."

"Humph! I s'pose I'll know the worst on settlin'-day."

Then, after a few moments, making a final clutch at economy before the warmth and the whisky subdued him altogether:

"Say, Nicholas, have you got—hasn't the Ol' Chief got any—less glorious breeches than those?"

"Hey?"

"Anything little cheaper?"

"Nuh," says Nicholas.

The Boy closed his eyes, relieved on the whole. Fate had a mind to see him in chaparejos. Let her look to the sequel, then!

When consciousness came back it brought the sound of Yagorsha's yarning by the fire, and the occasional laugh or grunt punctuating the eternal "Story."

The Colonel was sitting there among them, solacing himself by adding to the smoke that thickened the stifling air.

Presently the Story-teller made some shrewd hit, that shook the Pymeut community into louder grunts of applause and a general chuckling. The Colonel turned his head slowly, and blew out a fresh cloud: "Good joke?"

In the pause that fell thereafter, Yagorsha, imperturbable, the only one who had not laughed, smoothed his lank, iron-gray locks down on either side of his wide face, and went on renewing the sinew open-work in his snow-shoe.

"When Ol' Chief's father die—"

All the Pymeuts chuckled afresh. The Boy listened eagerly. Usually Yagorsha's stories were tragic, or, at least, of serious interest, ranging from bereaved parents who turned into wolverines, all the way to the machinations of the Horrid Dwarf and the Cannibal Old Woman.

The Colonel looked at Nicholas. He seemed as entertained as the rest, but quite willing to leave his family history in professional hands.

"Ol' Chief's father, Glovotsky, him Russian," Yagorsha began again, laying down his sinew-thread a moment and accepting some of the Colonel's tobacco.

"I didn't know you had any white blood in you," interrupted the Colonel, offering his pouch to Nicholas. "I might have suspected Muckluck—"

"Heap got Russian blood," interrupted Joe.

As the Story-teller seemed to be about to repeat the enlivening tradition concerning the almost mythical youth of Ol' Chief's father, that subject of the great Katharine's, whose blood was flowing still in Pymeut veins, just then in came Yagorsha's daughter with some message to her father. He grunted acquiescence, and she turned to go. Joe called something after her, and she snapped back. He jumped up to bar her exit. She gave him a smart cuff across the eyes, which surprised him almost into the fire, and while he was recovering his equilibrium she fled. Yagorsha and all the Pymeuts laughed delightedly at Joe's discomfiture.

The Boy had been obliged to sit up to watch this spirited encounter. The only notice the Colonel took of him was to set the kettle on the fire. While he was dining his pardner gathered up the blankets and crawled out.

"Comin' in half a minute," the Boy called after him. The answer was swallowed by the tunnel.

"Him go say goo'-bye Ol' Chief," said Nicholas, observing how the Colonel's pardner was scalding himself in his haste to despatch a second cup of tea.

But the Boy bolted the last of his meal, gathered up the kettle, mug, and frying-pan, which had served him for plate as well, and wormed his way out as fast as he could. There was the sled nearly packed for the journey, and watching over it, keeping the dogs at bay, was an indescribably dirty little boy in a torn and greasy denim parki over rags of reindeer-skin. Nobody else in sight but Yagorsha's daughter down at the water-hole.

"Where's my pardner gone?" The child only stared, having no English apparently.

While the Boy packed the rest of the things, and made the tattered canvas fast under the lashing, Joe came out of the Kachime. He stood studying the prospect a moment, and his dull eyes suddenly gleamed. Anna was coming up from the river with her dripping pail. He set off with an affectation of leisurely indifference, but he made straight for his enemy. She seemed not to see him till he was quite near, then she sheered off sharply. Joe hardly quickened his pace, but seemed to gain. She set down her bucket, and turned back towards the river.

"Idiot!" ejaculated the Boy; "she could have reached her own ighloo." The dirty child grinned, and tore off towards the river to watch the fun. Anna was hidden now by a pile of driftwood. The Boy ran down a few yards to bring her within range again. For all his affectation of leisureliness and her obvious fluster, no doubt about it, Joe was gaining on her. She dropped her hurried walk and frankly took to her heels, Joe doing the same; but as she was nearly as fleet of foot as Muckluck, in spite of her fat, she still kept a lessening distance between herself and her pursuer.

The ragged child had climbed upon the pile of drift-wood, and stood hunched with the cold, his shoulders up to his ears, his hands withdrawn in his parki sleeves, but he was grinning still. The Boy, a little concerned as to possible reprisals upon so impudent a young woman, had gone on and on, watching the race down to the river, and even across the ice a little way. He stood still an instant staring as Joe, going now as hard as he could, caught up with her at last. He took hold of the daughter of the highly-respected Yagorsha, and fell to shaking and cuffing her. The Boy started off full tilt to the rescue. Before he could reach them Joe had thrown her down on the ice. She half got up, but her enemy, advancing upon her again, dealt her a blow that made her howl and sent her flat once more.

"Stop that! You hear? Stop it!" the Boy called out.

But Joe seemed not to hear. Anna had fallen face downward on the ice this time, and lay there as if stunned. Her enemy caught hold of her, pulled her up, and dragged her along in spite of her struggles and cries.

"Let her alone!" the Boy shouted. He was nearly up to them now. But Joe's attention was wholly occupied in hauling Anna back to the village, maltreating her at intervals by the way. Now the girl was putting up one arm piteously to shield her bleeding face from his fists. "Don't you hit her again, or it'll be the worse for you." But again Joe's hand was lifted. The Boy plunged forward, caught the blow as it descended, and flung the arm aside, wrenched the girl free, and as Joe came on again, looking as if he meant business, the Boy planted a sounding lick on his jaw. The Pymeut staggered, and drew off a little way, looking angry enough, but, to the Boy's surprise, showing no fight.

It occurred to him that the girl, her lip bleeding, her parki torn, seemed more surprised than grateful; and when he said, "You come back with me; he shan't touch you," she did not show the pleased alacrity that you would expect. But she was no doubt still dazed. They all stood looking rather sheepish, and like actors "stuck" who cannot think of the next line, till Joe turned on the girl with some mumbled question. She answered angrily. He made another grab at her. She screamed, and got behind the Boy. Very resolutely he widened his bold buck-skin legs, and dared Joe to touch the poor frightened creature cowering behind her protector. Again silence.

"What's the trouble between you two?"

They looked at each other, and then away. Joe turned unexpectedly, and shambled off in the direction of the village. Not a word out of Anna as she returned by the side of her protector, but every now and then she looked at him sideways. The Boy felt her inexpressive gratitude, and was glad his journey had been delayed, or else, poor devil—

Joe had stopped to speak to—

"Who on earth's that white woman?"

"Nicholas' sister."

"Not Muckluck?"

She nodded.

"What's she dressed like that for?"

"Often like that in summer. Me, too—me got Holy Cross clo'es."

Muckluck went slowly up towards the Kachime with Joe. When the others got to the water-hole, Anna turned and left the Boy without a word to go and recover her pail. The Boy stood a moment, looking for some sign of the Colonel, and then went along the river bank to Ol' Chief's. No, the Colonel had gone back to the Kachime.

The Boy came out again, and to his almost incredulous astonishment, there was Joe dragging the unfortunate Anna towards an ighloo. As he looked back, to steer straight for the entrance-hole, he caught sight of the Boy, dropped his prey, and disappeared with some precipitancy into the ground. When Anna had gathered herself up, the Boy was standing in front of her.

"You don't seem to be able to take very good care o' yourself." She pushed her tousled hair out of her eyes. "I don't wonder your own people give it up if you have to be rescued every half-hour. What's the matter with you and Joe?" She kept looking down. "What have you done to make him like this?" She looked up suddenly and laughed, and then her eyes fell.

"Done nothin'."

"Why should he want to kill you, then?"

"No kill" she said, smiling, a little rueful and embarrassed again, with her eyes on the ground. Then, as the Boy still stood there waiting, "Joe," she whispered, glancing over her shoulder—"Joe want me be he squaw."

The Boy fell back an astonished step.

"Jee-rusalem! He's got a pretty way o' sayin' so. Why don't you tell your father?"

"Tell—father?" It seemed never to have occurred to her.

"Yes; can't Yagorsha protect you?"

She looked about doubtfully and then over her shoulder.

"That Joe's ighloo," she said.

He pictured to himself the horror that must assail her blood at the sight. Yes, he was glad to have saved any woman from so dreadful a fate. Did it happen often? and did nobody interfere? Muckluck was coming down from the direction of the Kachime. The Boy went to meet her, throwing over his shoulder, "You'd better stick to me, Anna, as long as I'm here. I don't know, I'm sure, what'll happen to you when I'm gone." Anna followed a few paces, and then sat down on the snow to pull up and tie her disorganized leg-gear.

Muckluck was standing still, looking at the Boy with none of the kindness a woman ought to show to one who had just befriended her sex.

"Did you see that?"

She nodded. "See that any day."

The Boy stopped, appalled at the thought of woman in a perpetual state of siege.

"Brute! hound!" he flung out towards Joe's ighloo.

"No," says Muckluck firmly; "Joe all right."

"You say that, after what's happened this morning?" Muckluck declined to take the verdict back. "Did you see him strike her?"

"No hurt."

"Oh, didn't it? He threw her down, as hard as he could, on the ice."

"She get up again."

He despised Muckluck in that moment.

"You weren't sorry to see another girl treated so?"

She smiled.

"What if it had been you?"

"Oh, he not do that to me."

"Why not? You can't tell."

"Oh, yes." She spoke with unruffled serenity.

"It will very likely be you the next time." The Boy took a brutal pleasure in presenting the hideous probability.

"No," she returned unmoved. "Joe savvy I no marry Pymeut."

The Boy stared, mystified by the lack of sequence. "Poor Anna doesn't want to marry that Pymeut."

Muckluck nodded.

The Boy gave her up. Perversity was not confined to the civilized of her sex. He walked on to find the Colonel. Muckluck followed, but the Boy wouldn't speak to her, wouldn't look at her.

"You like my Holy Cross clo'es?" she inquired. "Me—I look like your kind of girls now, huh?" No answer, but she kept up with him. "See?" She held up proudly a medallion, or coin of some sort, hung on a narrow strip of raw-hide.

He meant not to look at it at all, and he jerked his head away after the merest glance that showed him the ornament was tarnished silver, a little bigger than an American dollar, and bore no device familiar to his eyes. He quickened his pace, and walked on with face averted. The Colonel appeared just below the Kachime.

"Well, aren't you ever comin'?" he called out.

"I've been ready this half-hour—hangin' about waitin' for you. That devil Joe," he went on, lowering his voice as he came up and speaking hurriedly, "has been trying to drag Yagorsha's girl into his ighloo. They've just had a fight out yonder on the ice. I got her away, but not before he'd thrown her down and given her a bloody face. We ought to tell old Yagorsha, hey?"

Muckluck chuckled. The Boy turned on her angrily, and saw her staring back at Joe's ighloo. There, sauntering calmly past the abhorred trap, was the story-teller's daughter. Past it? No. She actually halted and busied herself with her legging thong.

"That girl must be an imbecile!" Or was it the apparition of her father, up at the Kachime entrance, that inspired such temerity?

The Boy had gone a few paces towards her, and then turned. "Yagorsha!" he called up the slope. Yagorsha stood stock-still, although the Boy waved unmistakable danger-signals towards Joe's ighloo. Suddenly an arm flashed out of the tunnel, caught Anna by the ankle, and in a twinkling she lay sprawling on her back. Two hands shot out, seized her by the heels, and dragged the wretched girl into the brute's lair. It was all over in a flash. A moment's paralysis of astonishment, and the involuntary rush forward was arrested by Muckluck, who fastened herself on to the rescuer's parki-tail and refused to be detached. "Yagorsha!" shouted the Boy. But it was only the Colonel who hastened towards them at the summons. The poor girl's own father stood calmly smoking, up there, by the Kachime, one foot propped comfortably on the travellers' loaded sled. "Yagorsha!" he shouted again, and then, with a jerk to free himself from Muckluck, the Boy turned sharply towards the ighloo, seeming in a bewildered way to be, himself, about to transact this paternal business for the cowardly old loafer. But Muckluck clung to his arm, laughing.

"Yagorsha know. Joe give him nice mitts—sealskin—new mitts."

"Hear that, Colonel? For a pair of mitts he sells his daughter to that ruffian."

Without definite plan, quite vaguely and instinctively, he shook himself free from Muckluck, and rushed down to the scene of the tragedy. Muffled screams and yells issued with the smoke. Muckluck turned sharply to the Colonel, who was following, and said something that sent him headlong after the Boy. He seized the doughty champion by the feet just as he was disappearing in the tunnel, and hauled him out.

"What in thunder—All right, you go first, then. Quick! as more screams rent the still air.

"Don't be a fool. You've been interruptin' the weddin' ceremonies."

Muckluck had caught up with them, and Yagorsha was advancing leisurely across the snow.

"She no want you," whispered Muckluck to the Boy. "She like Joe—like him best of all." Then, as the Boy gaped incredulously: "She tell me heap long time ago she want Joe."

"That's just part of the weddin' festivity," says the Colonel, as renewed shrieks issued from under the snow. "You've been an officious interferer, and I think the sooner I get you out o' Pymeut the healthier it'll be for you."

The Boy was too flabbergasted to reply, but he was far from convinced. The Colonel turned back to apologise to Yagorsha.

"No like this in your country?" inquired Muckluck of the crestfallen champion.

"N-no—not exactly."

"When you like girl—what you do?"

"Tell her so," muttered the Boy mechanically.

"Well—Joe been tellin' Anna—all winter."

"And she hated him."

"No. She like Joe—best of any."

"What did she go on like that for, then?"

"Oh-h! She know Joe savvy."

The Boy felt painfully small at his own lack of savoir, but no less angry.

"When you marry"—he turned to her incredulously—"will it be"—again the shrieks—"like this?"

"I no marry Pymeut."

Glancing riverwards, he saw the dirty imp, who had been so wildly entertained by the encounter on the ice, still huddled on his drift-wood observatory, presenting as little surface to the cold as possible, but grinning still with rapture at the spirited last act of the winter-long drama. As the Boy, with an exclamation of "Well, I give it up," walked slowly across the slope after the Colonel and Yagorsha, Muckluck lingered at his side.

"In your country when girl marry—she no scream?"

"Well, no; not usually, I believe."

"She go quiet? Like—like she want—" Muckluck stood still with astonishment and outraged modesty.

"They agree," he answered irritably. "They don't go on like wild beasts."

Muckluck pondered deeply this matter of supreme importance.

"When you—get you squaw, you no make her come?"

The Boy shook his head, and turned away to cut short these excursions into comparative ethnology.

But Muckluck was athirst for the strange new knowledge.

"What you do?"

He declined to betray his plan of action.

"When you—all same Joe? Hey?"

Still no answer.

"When you know—girl like you best—you no drag her home?"

"No. Be quiet."

"No? How you marry you self, then?"

The conversation would be still more embarrassing before the Colonel, so he stopped, and said shortly: "In our country nobody beats a woman because he likes her."

"How she know, then?"

"They agree, I tell you."

"Oh—an' girl—just come—when he call? Oh-h!" She dropped her jaw, and stared. "No fight a little?" she gasped. "No scream quite small?"

"No, I tell you." He ran on and joined the Colonel. Muckluck stood several moments rooted in amazement.

Yagorsha had called the rest of the Pymeuts out, for these queer guests of theirs were evidently going at last.

They all said "Goo'-bye" with great goodwill. Only Muckluck in her chilly "Holy Cross clo'es" stood sorrowful and silent, swinging her medal slowly back and forth.

Nicholas warned them that the Pymeut air-hole was not the only one.

"No," Yagorsha called down the slope; "better no play tricks with him." He nodded towards the river as the travellers looked back. "Him no like. Him got heap plenty mouths—chew you up." And all Pymeut chuckled, delighted at their story-teller's wit.

Suddenly Muckluck broke away from the group, and ran briskly down to the river trail.

"I will pray for you—hard." She caught hold of the Boy's hand, and shook it warmly. "Sister Winifred says the Good Father—"

"Fact is, Muckluck," answered the Boy, disengaging himself with embarrassment, "my pardner here can hold up that end. Don't you think you'd better square Yukon Inua? Don't b'lieve he likes me."

And they left her, shivering in her "Holy Cross clo'es," staring after them, and sadly swinging her medal on its walrus-string.

"I don't mind sayin' I'm glad to leave Pymeut behind," said the Colonel.

"Same here."

"You're safe to get into a muss if you mix up with anything that has to do with women. That Muckluck o' yours is a minx."

"She ain't my Muckluck, and I don't believe she's a minx, not a little bit."

Not wishing to be too hard on his pardner, the Colonel added:

"I lay it all to the chaparejos myself." Then, observing his friend's marked absence of hilarity, "You're very gay in your fine fringes."

"Been a little too gay the last two or three hours."

"Well, now, I'm glad to hear you say that. I think myself we've had adventures enough right here at the start."

"I b'lieve you. But there's something in that idea o' yours. Other fellas have noticed the same tendency in chaparejos."

"Well, if the worst comes to the worst," drawled the Colonel, "we'll change breeches."

The suggestion roused no enthusiasm.

"B'lieve I'd have a cammin' influence. Yes, sir, I reckon I could keep those fringes out o' kinks."

"Oh, I think they'll go straight enough after this"; and the Boy's good spirits returned before they passed the summer village.

It came on to snow again, about six o'clock, that second day out, and continued steadily all the night. What did it matter? They were used to snow, and they were as jolly as clams at high-tide.

The Colonel called a halt in the shelter of a frozen slough, between two banks, sparsely timbered, but promising all the wood they needed, old as well as new. He made his camp fire on the snow, and the Boy soon had the beef-tea ready—always the first course so long as Liebig lasted.

Thereafter, while the bacon was frying and the tea brewing, the Colonel stuck up in the snow behind the fire some sticks on which to dry their foot-gear. When he pulled off his mucklucks his stockinged feet smoked in the frosty air. The hint was all that was needed, that first night on the trail, for the Boy to follow suit and make the change into dry things. The smoky background was presently ornamented with German socks, and Arctic socks (a kind of felt slipper), and mucklucks, each with a stick run through them to the toe, all neatly planted in a row, like monstrous products of a snow-garden. With dry feet, burning faces and chilly backs, they hugged the fire, ate supper, laughed and talked, and said that life on the trail wasn't half bad. Afterwards they rolled themselves in their blankets, and went to sleep on their spruce-bough spring mattresses spread near the fire on the snow.

After about half an hour of oblivion the Boy started up with the drowsy impression that a flying spark from the dying fire had set their stuff ablaze. No. But surely the fire had been made up again—and—he rubbed the sleep out of his incredulous eyes—yes, Muckluck was standing there!

"What in thunder!" he began. "Wh-what is it?"

"It is me."

"I can see that much. But what brings you here?"

Shivering with cold, she crouched close to the fire, dressed, as he could see now, in her native clothes again, and it was her parki that had scorched—was scorching still.

"Me—I—" Smiling, she drew a stiff hand out of its mitten and held it over the reviving blaze, glancing towards the Colonel. He seemed to be sleeping very sound, powdered over already with soft wet snow; but she whispered her next remark.

"I think I come help you find that Onge Grove."

"I think you'll do nothing of the kind." He also spoke with a deliberate lowering of the note. His great desire not to wake the Colonel gave an unintentional softness to his tone.

"You think winter bad time for squaws to travel?" She shook her head, and showed her beautiful teeth an instant in the faint light. Then, rising, half shy, but very firm, "I no wait till summer."

He was so appalled for the moment, at the thought of having her on their hands, all this way from Pymeut, on a snowy night, that words failed him. As she watched him she, too, grew grave.

"You say me nice girl."

"When did I say that?" He clutched his head in despair.

"When you first come. When Shaman make Ol' Chief all well."

"I don't remember it."

"Yes."

"I think you misunderstood me, Muckluck."

"Heh?" Her countenance fell, but more puzzled than wounded.

"That is—oh, yes—of course—you're a nice girl."

"I think—Anna, too—you like me best." She helped out the white man's bashfulness. But as her interlocutor, appalled, laid no claim to the sentiment, she lifted the mittened hand to her eyes, and from under it scanned the white face through the lightly falling snow. The other hand, still held out to the comfort of the smoke, was trembling a little, perhaps not altogether with the cold.

"The Colonel'll have to take over the breeches," said the Boy, with the air of one wandering in his head. Then, desperately: "What am I to do? What am I to say?"

"Say? You say you no like girl scream, no like her fight like Anna. Heh? So, me—I come like your girls—quite, quite good.... Heh?"

"You don't understand, Muckluck. I—you see, I could never find that Orange Grove if you came along."

"Why?"

"Well—a—no woman ever goes to help to find an Orange Grove. Th-there's a law against it."

"Heh? Law?"

Alas! she knew too little to be impressed by the Majesty invoked.

"You see, women, they—they come by-and-by—when the Orange Grove's all—all ready for 'em. No man ever takes a woman on that kind of hunt."

Her saddened face was very grave. The Boy took heart.

"Now, the Pymeuts are going in a week or two, Nicholas said, to hunt caribou in the hills."

"Yes."

"But they won't take you to hunt caribou. No; they leave you at home. It's exactly the same with Orange Groves. No nice girl ever goes hunting."

Her lip trembled.

"Me—I can fish."

"Course you can." His spirits were reviving. "You can do anything—except hunt." As she lifted her head with an air of sudden protest he quashed her. "From the beginning there's been a law against that. Squaws must stay at home and let the men do the huntin'."

"Me ... I can cook"—she was crying now—"while you hunt. Good supper all ready when you come home."

He shook his head solemnly.

"Perhaps you don't know"—she flashed a moment's hope through her tears—"me learn sew up at Holy Cross. Sew up your socks for you when they open their mouths." But she could see that not even this grand new accomplishment availed.

"Can help pull sled," she suggested, looking round a little wildly as if instantly to illustrate. "Never tired," she added, sobbing, and putting her hands up to her face.

"Sh! sh! Don't wake the Colonel." He got up hastily and stood beside her at the smouldering fire. He patted her on the shoulder. "Of course you're a nice girl. The nicest girl in the Yukon"—he caught himself up as she dropped her hands from her face—"that is, you will be, if you go home quietly."

Again she hid her eyes.

Go home? How could he send her home all that way at this time of night? It was a bothering business!

Again her hands fell from the wet unhappy face. She shivered a little when she met his frowning looks, and turned away. He stooped and picked up her mitten. Why, you couldn't turn a dog away on a night like this—

Plague take the Pymeuts, root and branch! She had shuffled her feet into her snow-shoe straps, and moved off in the dimness. But for the sound of sobbing, he could not have told just where, in the softly-falling snow, Muckluck's figure was fading into the dusk. He hurried after her, conscience-stricken, but most unwilling.

"Look here," he said, when he had caught up with her, "I'm sorry you came all this way in the cold—very sorry." Her sobs burst out afresh, and louder now, away from the Colonel's restraining presence. "But, see here: I can't send you off like this. You might die on the trail."

"Yes, I think me die," she agreed.

"No, don't do that. Come back, and we'll tell the Colonel you're going to stay by the fire till morning, and then go home."

She walked steadily on. "No, I go now."

"But you can't, Muckluck. You can't find the trail."

"I tell you before, I not like your girls. I can go in winter as good as summer. I can hunt!" She turned on him fiercely. "Once I hunt a owel. Ketch him, too!" She sniffed back her tears. "I can do all kinds."

"No, you can't hunt Orange Groves," he said, with a severity that might seem excessive. "But I can't let you go off in this snowstorm—"

"He soon stop. Goo'-bye."

Never word of sweeter import in his ears than that. But he was far from satisfied with his conduct all the same. It was quite possible that the Pymeuts, discovering her absence, would think he had lured her away, and there might be complications. So it was with small fervour that he said: "Muckluck, I wish you'd come back and wait till morning."

"No, I go now." She was in the act of darting forward on those snow-shoes, that she used so skillfully, when some sudden thought cried halt. She even stopped crying. "I no like go near blow-hole by night. I keep to trail—"

"But how the devil do you do it?"

She paid no heed to the interruption, seeming busy in taking something over her head from round her neck.

"To-morrow," she said, lowering her tear-harshened voice, "you find blow-hole. You give this to Yukon Inua—say I send it. He will not hate you any more." She burst into a fresh flood of tears. In a moment the dim sight of her, the faint trail of crying left in her wake, had so wholly vanished that, but for the bit of string, as it seemed to be, left in his half-frozen hands, he could almost have convinced himself he had dreamt the unwelcome visit.

The half-shut eye of the camp fire gleamed cheerfully, as he ran back, and crouched down where poor little Muckluck had knelt, so sure of a welcome. Muckluck, cogitated the Boy, will believe more firmly than ever that, if a man doesn't beat a girl, he doesn't mean business. What was it he had wound round one hand? What was it dangling in the acrid smoke? That, then—her trinket, the crowning ornament of her Holy Cross holiday attire, that was what she was offering the old ogre of the Yukon—for his unworthy sake. He stirred up the dying fire to see it better. A woman's face—some Catholic saint? He held the medal lower to catch the fitful blaze. "D. G. Autocratrix Russorum." The Great Katharine! Only a little crown on her high-rolled hair, and her splendid chest all uncovered to the Arctic cold.

Her Yukon subjects must have wondered that she wore no parki—this lady who had claimed sole right to all the finest sables found in her new American dominions. On the other side of the medal, Minerva, with a Gorgon-furnished shield and a beautiful bone-tipped harpoon, as it looked, with a throwing-stick and all complete. But she, too, would strike the Yukon eye as lamentably chilly about the legs. How had these ladies out of Russia and Olympus come to lodge in Ol' Chief's ighloo? Had Glovotsky won this guerdon at Great Katharine's hands? Had he brought it on that last long journey of his to Russian America, and left it to his Pymeut children with his bones? Well, Yukon Inua should not have it yet. The Boy thrust the medal into a pocket of his chaparejos, and crawled into his snow-covered bed.



CHAPTER XI

HOLY CROSS

"Raise the stone, and ye shall find me; cleave the wood, and there am I."

The stars were shining frostily, in a clear sky, when the Boy crawled out from under his snow-drift in the morning. He built up the fire, quaking in the bitter air, and bustled the breakfast.

"You seem to be in something of a hurry," said the Colonel, with a yawn stifled in a shiver.

"We haven't come on this trip to lie abed in the morning," his pardner returned with some solemnity. "I don't care how soon I begin caperin' ahead with that load again."

"Well, it'll be warmin', anyway," returned the Colonel, "and I can't say as much for your fire."

It was luck that the first forty miles of the trail had already been traversed by the Boy. He kept recognising this and that in the landscape, with an effect of good cheer on both of them. It postponed a little the realization of their daring in launching themselves upon the Arctic waste, without a guide or even a map that was of the smallest use.

Half an hour after setting off, they struck into the portage. Even with a snow-blurred trail, the Boy's vivid remembrance of the other journey gave them the sustaining sense that they were going right. The Colonel was working off the surprising stiffness with which he had wakened, and they were both warm now; but the Colonel's footsoreness was considerable, an affliction, besides, bound to be worse before it was better.

The Boy spoke with the old-timer's superiority, of his own experience, and was so puffed up, at the bare thought of having hardened his feet, that he concealed without a qualm the fact of a brand-new blister on his heel. A mere nothing that, not worth mentioning to anyone who remembered the state he was in at the end of that awful journey of penitence.

It was well on in the afternoon before it began to snow again, and they had reached the frozen lake. The days were lengthening, and they still had good light by which to find the well-beaten trail on the other side.

"Now in a minute we'll hear the mission dogs. What did I tell you?" Out of the little wood, a couple of teams were coming, at a good round pace. They were pulled up at the waterhole, and the mission natives ran on to meet the new arrivals. They recognised the Boy, and insisted on making the Colonel, who was walking very lame, ride to the mission in the strongest sled, and they took turns helping the dogs by pushing from behind. The snow was falling heavily again, and one of the Indians, Henry, looking up with squinted eyes, said, "There'll be nothing left of that walrus-tusk."

"Hey?" inquired the Boy, straining at his sled-rope and bending before the blast. "What's that?"

"Don't you know what makes snow?" said Henry.

"No. What does?"

"Ivory whittlings. When they get to their carving up yonder then we have snow."

What was happening to the Colonel?

The mere physical comfort of riding, instead of serving as packhorse, great as it was, not even that could so instantly spirit away the weariness, and light up the curious, solemn radiance that shone on the Colonel's face. It struck the Boy that good old Kentucky would look like that when he met his dearest at the Gate of Heaven—if there was such a place.

The Colonel was aware of the sidelong wonder of his comrade's glance, for the sleds, abreast, had come to a momentary halt. But still he stared in front of him, just as a sailor in a storm dares not look away from the beacon-light an instant, knowing all the waste about him abounds in rocks and eddies and in death, and all the world of hope and safe returning is narrowed to that little point of light.

After the moment's speculation the Boy turned his eyes to follow the Colonel's gaze into space.

"The Cross! the Cross!" said the man on the sled. "Don't you see it?"

"Oh, that? Yes."

At the Boy's tone the Colonel, for the first time, turned his eyes away from the Great White Symbol.

"Don't know what you're made of, if, seeing that... you needn't be a Church member, but only a man, I should think, to—to—" He blew out his breath in impotent clouds, and then went on. "We Americans think a good deal o' the Stars and Stripes, but that up yonder—that's the mightier symbol."

"Huh!" says the Boy. "Stars and Stripes tell of an ideal of united states. That up there tells of an ideal of United Mankind. It's the great Brotherhood Mark. There isn't any other standard that men would follow just to build a hospice in a place like this."

At an upper window, in a building on the far side of the white symbol, the travellers caught a glimpse, through the slanting snow, of one of the Sisters of St. Ann shutting in the bright light with thick curtains.

"Glass!" ejaculated the Colonel.

One of the Indians had run on to announce them, and as they drew up at the door—that the Boy remembered as a frame for Brother Paul, with his lamp, to search out iniquity, and his face of denunciation—out came Father Brachet, brisk, almost running, his two hands outstretched, his face a network of welcoming wrinkles. No long waiting, this time, in the reception-room. Straight upstairs to hot baths and mild, reviving drinks, and then, refreshed and already rested, down to supper.

With a shade of anxiety the Boy looked about for Brother Paul. But Father Wills was here anyhow, and the Boy greeted him, joyfully, as a tried friend and a man to be depended on. There was Brother Etienne, and there were two strange faces.

Father Brachet put the Colonel on his right and the Boy on his left, introducing: "Fazzer Richmond, my predecessor as ze head of all ze Alaskan missions," calmly eliminating Greek, Episcopalian, and other heretic establishments. "Fazzer Richmond you must have heard much of. He is ze great ausority up here. He is now ze Travelling Priest. You can ask him all. He knows everysing."

In no wise abashed by this flourish, Father Richmond shook hands with the Big Chimney men, smiling, and with a pleasant ease that communicated itself to the entire company.

It was instantly manifest that the scene of this Jesuit's labours had not been chiefly, or long, beyond the borders of civilization. In the plain bare room where, for all its hospitality and good cheer, reigned an air of rude simplicity and austerity of life—into this somewhat rarefied atmosphere Father Richmond brought a whiff from another world. As he greeted the two strangers, and said simply that he had just arrived, himself, by way of the Anvik portage, the Colonel felt that he must have meant from New York or from Paris instead of the words he added, "from St. Michael's."

He claimed instant kinship with the Colonel on the strength of their both being Southerners.

"I'm a Baltimore man," he said, with an accent no Marylander can purge of pride.

"How long since you've been home?"

"Oh, I go back every year."

"He goes all over ze world, to tell ze people—"

"—something of the work being done here by Father Brachet—and all of them." He included the other priests and lay-brothers in a slight circular movement of the grizzled head.

And to collect funds! the Colonel rightly divined, little guessing how triumphantly he achieved that end.

"Alaska is so remote," said the Travelling Priest, as if in apology for popular ignorance, "and people think of it so... inadequately, shall we say? In trying to explain the conditions up here, I have my chief difficulty in making them realise the great distances we have to cover. You tell them that in the Indian tongue Alaska means "the great country," they smile, and think condescendingly of savage imagery. It is vain to say we have an area of six hundred thousand square miles. We talk much in these days of education; but few men and no women can count! Our Eastern friends get some idea of what we mean, when we tell them Alaska is bigger than all the Atlantic States from Maine to Louisiana with half of great Texas thrown in. With a coast-line of twenty six thousand miles, this Alaska of ours turns to the sea a greater frontage than all the shores of all the United States combined. It extends so far out towards Asia that it carries the dominions of the Great Republic as far west of San Francisco as New York is east of it, making California a central state. I try to give Europeans some idea of it by saying that if you add England, Ireland, and Scotland together, and to that add France, and to that add Italy, you still lack enough to make a country the size of Alaska. I do not speak of our mountains, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen thousand feet high, and our Yukon, flowing for more than two thousand miles through a country almost virgin still."

"You travel about up here a good deal?"

"He travels all ze time. He will not rest," said Father Brachet as one airing an ancient grievance.

"Yes, I will rest now—a little. I have been eight hundred miles over the ice, with dogs, since January 1."

The Boy looked at him with something very like reverence. Here was a man who could give you tips!

"You have travelled abroad, too," the Colonel rather stated than asked.

"I spent a good deal of my youth in France and Germany."

"Educated over there?"

"Well, I am a Johns Hopkins man, but I may say I found my education in Rome. Speaking of education"—he turned to the other priests—"I have greatly advanced my grammar since we parted." Father Brachet answered with animation in French, and the conversation went forward for some minutes in that tongue. The discussion was interrupted to introduce the other new face, at the bottom of the table, to the Big Chimney men: "Resident Fazzer Roget of ze Kuskoquim mission."

"That is the best man on snow-shoes in Central Alaska," said Father Richmond low to the Colonel, nodding at the Kuskoquim priest.

"And he knows more of two of ze native dialects here zan anyone else," added the Father Superior.

"You must forgive our speaking much of the Indian tongues," said Father Richmond. "We are all making dictionaries and grammars; we have still to translate much of our religious instruction, and the great variety in dialect of the scattered tribes keeps us busy with linguistic studies."

"Tomorrow you must see our schools," said Father Brachet.

But the Boy answered quickly that they could not afford the time. He was surprised at the Colonel's silence; but the Boy didn't know what the Colonel's feet felt like.

Kentucky ain't sorry, he said to himself, to have a back to his chair, and to eat off china again. Kentucky's a voluptuary! I'll have to drag him away by main force; and the Boy allowed Father Richmond to help him yet more abundantly to the potatoes and cabbage grown last summer in the mission garden!

It was especially the vegetables that lent an element of luxury to the simple meal. The warm room, the excellent food, better cooked than any they had had for seven months, produced a gentle somnolence. The thought of the inviting look of the white-covered bed upstairs lay like a balm on the spirits of men not born to roughing it. As the travellers said an early and grateful good-night, the Boy added sleepily something about the start at dawn.

Father Brachet answered, "Morning will bring counsel, my son. I sink ze bleezzar-r will not let us lose you so soon."

They overslept themselves, and they knew it, in that way the would-be early riser does, before ever he looks into the accusing face of his watch. The Boy leapt out of bed.

"Hear that?" The wind was booming among the settlement buildings. "Sounds as if there was weather outside." A glance between the curtains showed the great gale at its height. The snow blew level in sheets and darkened the air.

"Well," said the Colonel, splashing mightily in the ice-cold water, "I don't know as I mind giving my feet twenty-four hours' time to come to their senses."

A hurried toilet and they went downstairs, sharp-set for breakfast after the long, refreshing sleep.

Father Richmond was writing on his knee by the stove in the reception-room.

"Good-morning—good-morning." He rang the bell.

"Well, what did we tell you? I don't think you'll get far today. Let these gentlemen know when breakfast is ready," he said, as Christopher put his head in. He looked at his watch. "I hope you will find everything you need," he said; and, continuing to talk about the gale and some damage it had done to one of the outbuildings, he went into the entry, just beyond the reception-room door, and began to put on his furs.

"You are not going out in such weather!" the Colonel called after him incredulously.

"Only as far as the church."

"Oh, is there church today?" inquired the Boy more cheerfully than one might expect.

The Colonel started and made a signal for discretion.

"Blest if it isn't Sunday!" he said under his breath.

"He doesn't seem dead-set on our observing it," whispered the Boy.

The Colonel warmed himself luxuriously at the stove, and seemed to listen for that summons from the entry that never came. Was Father Richmond out there still, or had he gone?

"Do they think we are heathens because we are not Jesuits?" he said under his breath, suddenly throwing out his great chest.

"Perhaps we ought to... Hey? They've been awfully considerate of us—"

The Colonel went to the door. Father Richmond was struggling with his snow-boots.

"With your permission, sir," says the Colonel in his most magnificent manner, "we will accompany you, or follow if you are in haste."

"With all my heart. Come," said the priest, "if you will wait and breakfast with us after Mass."

It was agreed, and the immediate order was countermanded. The sound of a bell came, muffled, through the storm.

With thoughts turning reluctantly from breakfast, "What's that?" asked the Boy.

"That is our church bell." The Father had helped the Colonel to find his parki.

"Oh—a—of course—"

"A fine tone, don't you think? But you can't tell so well in this storm. We are fond of our bell. It is the first that ever rang out in the Yukon valley. Listen!"

They stood still a moment before opening the front door. The Boy, seeing the very look of a certain high-shouldered gray stone "St. Andrew's" far away, and himself trotting along beside that figure, inseparable from first memories, was dimly aware again, as he stood at the Jesuit's door, in these different days, of the old Sunday feeling invading, permeating his consciousness, half reluctant, half amused.

The Colonel sat in a rural church and looked at the averted face of a woman.

Only to the priest was the sound all music.

"That language," he said, "speaks to men whatever tongue they call their own. The natives hear it for miles up the river, and down the river, and over the white hills, and far across the tundra. They come many miles to Mass—"

He opened the door, and the gale rushed in.

"I do not mean on days like this," he wound up, smiling, and out they went into the whirling snow.

The church was a building of logs like the others, except that it was of one story. Father Brachet was already there, with Father Wills and Brother Etienne; and, after a moment, in came Brother Paul, looking more waxen and aloof than ever, at the head of the school, the rear brought up by Brother Vincent and Henry.

In a moment the little Mother Superior appeared, followed by two nuns, heading a procession of native women and girls. They took their places on the other side of the church and bowed their heads.

"Beautiful creature!" ejaculated the Colonel under his breath, glancing back.

His companion turned his head sharply just in time to see Sister Winifred come last into the church, holding by either hand a little child. Both men watched her as she knelt down. Between the children's sallow, screwed-up, squinting little visages the calm, unconscious face of the nun shone white like a flower.

The strangers glanced discreetly about the rude little church, with its pictures and its modest attempt at stained glass.

"No wonder all this impresses the ignorant native," whispered the Colonel, catching himself up suddenly from sharing in that weakness.

Without, the wild March storm swept the white world; within another climate reigned—something of summer and the far-off South, of Italy herself, transplanted to this little island of civilisation anchored in the Northern waste.

"S'pose you've seen all the big cathedrals, eh?"

"Good many."

There was still a subdued rustling in the church, and outside, still the clanging bell contended with the storm.

"And this—makes you smile?"

"N—no," returned the older man with a kind of reluctance. "I've seen many a worse church; America's full of 'em."

"Hey?"

"So far as—dignity goes—" The Colonel was wrestling with some vague impression difficult for him to formulate. "You see, you can't build anything with wood that's better than a log-cabin. For looks—just looks—it beats all your fancy gimcracks, even brick; beats everything else hollow, except stone. Then they've got candles. We went on last night about the luxury of oil-lamps. They don't bring 'em in here!"

"We do in our prairie and Southern country churches."

"I know. But look at those altar lights." The Boy was too busy looking at Sister Winifred. "I tell you, sir, a man never made a finer thing than a tall wax candle."

"Sh! Mustn't talk in church."

The Colonel stared a moment at the Boy's presumption, drew himself up a little pompously, and crossed his arms over his huge chest.

"Why, they've got an organ!" The Boy forgot his strict views on church etiquette as the sudden sweetness swelled in the air. Brother Paul, with head thrown back and white face lifted, was playing, slowly, absently, like one who listens to some great choir invisible, and keeps their time with a few obedient but unnecessary chords. And yet—

"The fella can play," the Colonel admitted.

The native choir, composed entirely of little dark-faced boys, sang their way truly through the service, Father Brachet celebrating Mass.

"Brother Paul's ill, isn't he? Look!" The lay-brother had swayed, and drooped forward over the keyboard, but his choir sang steadily on. He recovered himself, and beckoned one of the boys to his side. When he rose, the child nodded and took the organist's place, playing quite creditably to the end. Brother Paul sat in the corner with bowed head.

Coming out, they were in time to confront Sister Winifred, holding back the youngest children, eager to anticipate their proper places in the procession.

The Boy looked fixedly at her, wondering. Suddenly meeting The clear eyes, he smiled, and then shrank inwardly at his forwardness. He could not tell if she remembered him.

The Colonel, finding himself next her at the door, bowed, and stood back for her to pass.

"No," she said gently; "my little children must wait for the older ones."

"You have them under good discipline, madam." He laid his hand on the furry shoulder of the smallest.

The Boy stood behind the Colonel, unaccountably shy in the presence of the only white woman he had seen in nearly seven months. She couldn't be any older than he, and yet she was a nun. What a gulf opened at the word! Sister Winifred and her charges fell into rank at the tail of the little procession, and vanished in the falling snow. At breakfast the Colonel would not sit down till he was presented to Brother Paul.

"Sir," he said in his florid but entirely sincere fashion, "I should like to thank you for the pleasure of hearing that music to-day. We were much impressed, sir, by the singing. How old is the boy who played the organ?"

"Ten," said Brother Paul, and for the first time the Boy saw him smile. "Yes, I think he has music in him, our little Jerome."

"And how well all your choir has the service by heart! Their unison is perfect."

"Yes," said Father Brachet from the head of the table, "our music has never been so good as since Paul came among us." He lifted his hand, and every one bowed his head.

After grace Father Richmond took the floor, conversationally, as seemed to be his wont, and breakfast went on, as supper had the night before, to the accompaniment of his shrewd observations and lively anecdotes. In the midst of all the laughter and good cheer Brother Paul sat at the end of the board, eating absently, saying nothing, and no one speaking to him.

Father Richmond especially, but, indeed, all of them, seemed arrant worldlings beside the youngest of the lay-brethren. The Colonel could more easily imagine Father Richmond walking the streets of Paris or of Rome, than "hitting the Yukon trail." He marvelled afresh at the devotion that brought such a man to wear out his fine attainments, his scholarship, his energy, his wide and Catholic knowledge, in travelling winter after winter, hundreds of miles over the ice from one Indian village to another. You could not divorce Father Richmond in your mind from the larger world outside; he spoke with its accent, he looked with his humourous, experienced eyes. You found it natural to think of him in very human relations. You wondered about his people, and what brought him to this.