otts 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