' that I wanted to see an' count
everybody in the district, he turned off the trail--he said it was a
trail but I couldn't see it--an' led the way to the hut. I went in an'
found a man lying on a couple of planks, just about dead. He was one of
the survivors of the wrecked steamer _Filarleon_, and had frozen all
the fingers of both hands. Two or three were turnin' gangrenous; an' one
of these had got so bad that with his other crippled hand, he had sawed
off the decomposin' member with his pocket-knife. One foot also was
frozen an' had turned black, but that afterwards recovered."

"What did you do for him?" asked the boy.

"Put him on the sled, of course," the Alaskan answered, "an' took him to
the nearest settlement. I afterwards heard that a doctor happened in to
camp soon after I left, an' got at his hurts right away, an' that he was
put back into fair condition all but the one finger.--That's no
tenderfoot's country up there."

"I wonder you stuck it out," said Hamilton. "But then," he added a
moment later, "I can see how a fellow would hate to quit."

"It was tough," reluctantly admitted the narrator, "an' I'll tell you
what I did. I'm not much of a hand with the pen, but right in the middle
of the work I found a man who was goin' down the river, an' I sat down
and wrote a long letter to the supervisor. It was about as plaintive a
thing as I ever read. I had no reason to expect an answer, but by chance
another party was comin' up that way, an' some weeks later I received a
reply. What do you suppose he said!"

"I haven't the least idea," answered the boy.

"His answer read just this way:

"'I chose you because you were experienced in the treeless coast. Go to
it. We are expecting you to make good.'"

"And," Hamilton said, his eyes shining, "I'll bet you did!"

CHAPTER IX

CONFRONTED WITH THE BLACK HAND

The sidelights that Hamilton had received on the Alaskan enumeration had
given him a greater zest for census work than ever, and he devoted not a
little of his spare time to the study of conditions in the far North.
Indeed, the lad became so enthusiastic about it that every evening, when
he reached home, he worked out the route of the enumerator whose
schedules he had edited during that day's work. He had secured the big
geological reconnaissance map of Alaska for the purpose. Consequently,
it was with a sense of regret that he faced the day when the last of the
Alaskan schedules had been edite