t. He figured briefly and to the point, and the adventure
became iridescent-hued, splendid. That eggs would sell at Dawson for
five dollars a dozen was a safe working premise. Whence it was
incontrovertible that one thousand dozen would bring, in the Golden
Metropolis, five thousand dollars.

On the other hand, expense was to be considered, and he considered it
well, for he was a careful man, keenly practical, with a hard head and a
heart that imagination never warmed. At fifteen cents a dozen, the
initial cost of his thousand dozen would be one hundred and fifty
dollars, a mere bagatelle in face of the enormous profit. And suppose,
just suppose, to be wildly extravagant for once, that transportation for
himself and eggs should run up eight hundred and fifty more; he would
still have four thousand clear cash and clean when the last egg was
disposed of and the last dust had rippled into his sack.

"You see, Alma,"--he figured it over with his wife, the cosy dining-room
submerged in a sea of maps, government surveys, guide-books, and Alaskan
itineraries,--"you see, expenses don't really begin till you make
Dyea--fifty dollars'll cover it with a first-class passage thrown in. Now
from Dyea to Lake Linderman, Indian packers take your goods over for
twelve cents a pound, twelve dollars a hundred, or one hundred and twenty
dollars a thousand. Say I have fifteen hundred pounds, it'll cost one
hundred and eighty dollars--call it two hundred and be safe. I am
creditably informed by a Klondiker just come out that I can buy a boat
for three hundred. But the same man says I'm sure to get a couple of
passengers for one hundred and fifty each, which will give me the boat
for nothing, and, further, they can help me manage it. And . . . that's
all; I put my eggs ashore from the boat at Dawson. Now let me see how
much is that?"

"Fifty dollars from San Francisco to Dyea, two hundred from Dyea to
Linderman, passengers pay for the boat--two hundred and fifty all told,"
she summed up swiftly.

"And a hundred for my clothes and personal outfit," he went on happily;
"that leaves a margin of five hundred for emergencies. And what possible
emergencies can arise?"

Alma shrugged her shoulders and elevated her brows. If that vast
Northland was capable of swallowing up a man and a thousand dozen eggs,
surely there was room and to spare for whatever else he might happen to
possess. So she thought, but she said nothing. She knew