ning toward the door.

"Phi Beta Ki," Marian pronounced the letters softly to herself as the
door closed. "Now who could that be?"

She was still puzzling over the mysterious letter when, after a hasty
luncheon, she again took up her palette and brushes and wound her way
around the hill to a point where stood a cabinet, ten feet square and
made of fiber-board.

She returned to her painting. She was doing a mass of ice that was
piling some two hundred yards out to sea. The work was absorbing, yet,
eager as she was to work, her mind went back to that letter in the
pigeon-hole up in the cabin.

She was deep in the mystery of it when a voice startled her. It came
from back of the cabinet.

"I say," the voice sang cheerily, "have you any letters in your little
P. O. on the hill?"

The voice thrilled her. It was new and sounded young.

"Yes," she said, throwing open the back of the cabinet and standing up,
"we have, quite--quite a variety."

The visitor was young, not more than twenty, she thought.

"What color?" she said teasingly, as she stepped from her cabinet.

"Blue," he said seriously.

"Blue?" She started. The mysterious letter was blue; the only blue
one she had seen for months.

"What name?"

"Well, you see," the young man flushed, "not--not any real name; just
the Greek letters, Phi Beta Ki."

He stepped into the cabinet and, with deft fingers, drew with charcoal
the characters.

"Like that," he smiled.

"Yes," she smiled back, "there is one."

"Grand!" he exclaimed. "Let's get it at once, shall we?"

They hastened up the hill. Marian wondered at herself, as she handed
out the letter; wondered that she did not question him further to make
sure he was really the rightful owner. But there was something free
and frank about his bearing. It disarmed suspicion.

After he had read the letter, she thought she caught a look of
disappointment on his face. If she did, it quickly vanished.

While she was dispensing the accustomed hospitality of the Northland, a
steaming plate of "mulligan" and a cup of coffee, she felt his eyes
resting upon her many times.

When at last he had finished eating, he turned and spoke hesitatingly:

"I--I'd like to ask a favor of you."

"All right."

"If another letter like that comes to me here, you keep it for me, will
you?"

"Why, yes, only I won't be here much longer. I'm going to Nome after
the break-up."

"I'm going north. I'll be back before