e the low sun hung over a
ragged range of hills topped with everlasting white. The great valley,
dark with an untrodden wilderness of birch and spruce and alder, lay on
this side, sombre and changeless, like a great, dark-green mat too
large for its resting-place, its edges turned up towards the line of
unmelting snow. Beyond were other ranges thrust skyward in a
magnificent confusion, while still to the farther side lay the purple
valley of the Koyukuk, a valley that called insistently to restless
men, welcoming them in the spring, and sending them back in the late
summer tired and haggard with the hunger of the North. Each year a
tithe remained behind, the toll of the trackless places, but the rest
went back again and again, and took new brothers with them.

"Did you like the books I sent you with Poleon when he went down to the
coast? I borrowed them from Shakespeare George."

The girl laughed. "Of course I did--that is, all but one of them."

"Which one?"

"I think it was called The Age of Reason, or something like that. I
didn't get a good look at it, for Father Barnum shrieked when he saw
it, then snatched it as if it were afire. He carried it down to the
river with the tongs."

"H'm! Now that I think of it," said the old man, "Shakespeare grinned
when he gave it to me. You see, Poleon ain't much better on the read
than I am, so we never noticed what kind of a book it was."

"When will Poleon get back, do you suppose?"

"Most any day now, unless the Dawson dance-halls are too much for him.
It won't take him long to sell our skins if what I hear is true."

"What is that?"

"About these Cheechakos. They say there are thousands of tenderfeet up
there, and more coming in every day."

"Oh! If I had only been here in time to go with him!" breathed the
girl. "I never saw a city. It must be just like Seattle, or New York."

Gale shook his head. "No. There's considerable difference. Some time
I'll take you out to the States, and let you see the world--maybe." He
uttered the last word in an undertone, as if in self-debate, but the
girl was too excited to notice.

"You will take mother, too, and the kiddies, won't you?"

"Of course!"

"Oh! I--I--" The attempt to express what this prospect meant to her was
beyond her girlish rapture, but her parted lips and shining eyes told
the story to Gale. "And Poleon must go, too. We can't go anywhere
without him." The old man smiled down upon her in reassurance. "I
won