n City, which was a city only in name. This lone miner
would claim one of the letters. Two, perhaps, would go to another
miner on Saw Tooth Mountain. Next week, an Eskimo happening down from
Shishmaref Island, seventy-five miles north, would take three letters
to Ben Norton and his sister, the government teachers for the Eskimos.
Two would go in a pigeon-hole, for Thompson, the teacher on Little
Diomede Island, twenty-two miles across the drifting ice. Later a
native would be paid ten sacks of flour for attempting to cross that
floe and deliver the contents of that box. There might be a scrawled
note for some Eskimo, a stray letter or two, and the rest would be for
Marian. At the present moment, she was the only white person at Cape
Prince of Wales, a little town of three hundred and fifty Eskimos.

"Pretty light this time," smiled the grizzled mail carrier as he
reached the cabin at the top of the hill; "mebby ten letters."

"Uncle Sam takes good care of his people," smiled Marian, "the teachers
of his native children and the miners who search for his hidden
treasures."

"I'll say he does! Must have cost all of ten dollars apiece to deliver
them letters," chuckled the carrier. "And the people that mailed 'em
stuck on a measly red two-cent stamp. I git fifty dollars for bringin'
'em the last sixty miles."

"And it's worth it, too."

"You're just right. Pretty tough trail. Pretty tough! Say!" he
exclaimed, suddenly remembering a bit of gossip, "did ye hear about
Tootsie Silock?"

"No." Marian was busy with the mail.

"Jist gossip, I reckon, but they say she's left her Eskimo husband--"

Marian did not answer. Gossip did not interest her. Besides, she had
found a letter that did interest her even more than those addressed to
her. A very careful penman had drawn the Greek letters, Phi Beta Ki,
on the outside of an envelope, and beneath it had written, "Cape Prince
of Wales, Alaska."

"Wha--"

She was on the point of sharing the mystery with the carrier, but
checked herself. Just some new gossip for him, was her mental comment.

"Here's the sack," she said, noting that he had finished drinking the
coffee she had prepared for him. "I hope there'll be more mail next
time. Letters mean so much to these people up at the top of the world.
Spring thaw'll be here pretty soon, then they can't get mail for two or
three months."

"That's right; it's fierce," said the carrier, taking the sack and
tur