the _Norden's_ shimmering trail led once more out to sea. Alan
looked up at them, and his mind groped strangely in the infinity that
lay above him. He had never measured it before. Life had been too full.
But now it seemed so vast, and his range in the tundras so far away,
that a great loneliness seized upon him as he turned his eyes to look
back at the dimly white shore-line dissolving swiftly in the gloom that
lay beneath the mountains.

CHAPTER XI

That night, in Olaf's cabin, Alan put himself back on the old track
again. He made no effort to minimize the tragedy that had come into his
life, and he knew its effect upon him would never be wiped away, and
that Mary Standish would always live in his thoughts, no matter what
happened in the years to come. But he was not the sort to let any part
of himself wither up and die because of a blow that had darkened his
mental visions of things. His plans lay ahead of him, his old ambitions
and his dreams of achievement. They seemed pulseless and dead now, but
he knew it was because his own fire had temporarily burned out. And he
realized the vital necessity of building it up again. So he first wrote
a letter to Ellen McCormick, and in this placed a second
letter--carefully sealed--which was not to be opened unless they found
Mary Standish, and which contained something he had found impossible to
put into words in Sandy's cabin. It was trivial and embarrassing when
spoken to others, but it meant a great deal to him. Then he made the
final arrangements for Olaf to carry him to Seward in the _Norden_, for
Captain Rifle's ship was well on her way to Unalaska. Thought of
Captain Rifle urged him to write another letter in which he told
briefly the disappointing details of his search.

He was rather surprised the next morning to find he had entirely
forgotten Rossland. While he was attending to his affairs at the bank,
Olaf secured information that Rossland was resting comfortably in the
hospital and had not one chance in ten of dying. It was not Alan's
intention to see him. He wanted to hear nothing he might have to say
about Mary Standish. To associate them in any way, as he thought of her
now, was little short of sacrilege. He was conscious of the change in
himself, for it was rather an amazing upsetting of the original Alan
Holt. That person would have gone to Rossland with the deliberate and
businesslike intention of sifting the matter to the bottom that he might
disprove