pain, encouraging him,
pressing gently upon him the beginning of a great faith that somewhere
beyond was a place to meet again. In the many days that followed, it
grew in him, but in a way no man or woman could see. It was a secret
about which he built a wall, setting it apart from that stoical
placidity of his nature which some people called indifference. Olaf
could see farther than others, because he had known Alan's father as a
brother. It had always been that way with the elder Holt--straight,
clean, deep-breathing, and with a smile on his lips in times of hurt.
Olaf had seen him face death like that. He had seen him rise up with
awesome courage from the beautiful form that had turned to clay under
his eyes, and fight forth again into a world burned to ashes. Something
of that look which he had seen in the eyes of the father he saw in
Alan's, in these days when they nosed their way up the Alaskan coast
together. Only to himself did Alan speak the name of Mary Standish, just
as his father had kept Elizabeth Holt's name sacred in his own heart.
Olaf, with mildly casual eyes and strong in the possession of memories,
observed how much alike they were, but discretion held his tongue, and
he said nothing to Alan of many things that ran in his mind.

He talked of Siberia--always of Siberia, and did not hurry on the way to
Seward. Alan himself felt no great urge to make haste. The days were
soft with the premature breath of summer. The nights were cold, and
filled with stars. Day after day mountains hung about them like mighty
castles whose battlements reached up into the cloud-draperies of the
sky. They kept close to the mainland and among the islands, camping
early each evening. Birds were coming northward by the thousand, and
each night Olaf's camp-fire sent up the delicious aroma of flesh-pots
and roasts. When at last they reached Seward, and the time came for Olaf
to turn back, there was an odd blinking in the old Swede's eyes, and as
a final comfort Alan told him again that the day would probably come
when he would go to Siberia with him. After that, he watched the
_Norden_ until the little boat was lost in the distance of the sea.

Alone, Alan felt once more a greater desire to reach his own country.
And he was fortunate. Two days after his arrival at Seward the steamer
which carried mail and the necessities of life to the string of
settlements reaching a thousand miles out into the Pacific left
Resurrection Bay, a