of each other, there arrived at Twenty Mile one Sandy
MacPherson, as companionable a man as ever whistled along the trail or
raised a ballad by a camp-fire. A Jesuit priest had run into his camp, a
couple of hundred miles up the Yukon, in the nick of time to say a last
word over the body of Sandy's partner. And on departing, the priest had
said, "My son, you will be lonely now." And Sandy had bowed his head
brokenly. "At Twenty Mile," the priest added, "there is a lonely man.
You have need of each other, my son."

So it was that Sandy became a welcome third at the post, brother to the
man and woman that resided there. He took Bonner moose-hunting and wolf-
trapping; and, in return, Bonner resurrected a battered and way-worn
volume and made him friends with Shakespeare, till Sandy declaimed iambic
pentameters to his sled-dogs whenever they waxed mutinous. And of the
long evenings they played cribbage and talked and disagreed about the
universe, the while Jees Uck rocked matronly in an easy-chair and darned
their moccasins and socks.

Spring came. The sun shot up out of the south. The land exchanged its
austere robes for the garb of a smiling wanton. Everywhere light laughed
and life invited. The days stretched out their balmy length and the
nights passed from blinks of darkness to no darkness at all. The river
bared its bosom, and snorting steamboats challenged the wilderness. There
were stir and bustle, new faces, and fresh facts. An assistant arrived
at Twenty Mile, and Sandy MacPherson wandered off with a bunch of
prospectors to invade the Koyokuk country. And there were newspapers and
magazines and letters for Neil Bonner. And Jees Uck looked on in
worriment, for she knew his kindred talked with him across the world.

Without much shock, it came to him that his father was dead. There was a
sweet letter of forgiveness, dictated in his last hours. There were
official letters from the Company, graciously ordering him to turn the
post over to the assistant and permitting him to depart at his earliest
pleasure. A long, legal affair from the lawyers informed him of
interminable lists of stocks and bonds, real estate, rents, and chattels
that were his by his father's will. And a dainty bit of stationery,
sealed and monogramed, implored dear Neil's return to his heart-broken
and loving mother.

Neil Bonner did some swift thinking, and when the _Yukon Belle_ coughed
in to the bank on her way down to Ber