Jees Uck?" he said. And then turning to Kitty: "Handsome
fellow! He'll do something with those two hands of his in this our
world."

Kitty nodded concurrence. "What is your name?" she asked.

The young savage flashed his quick eyes upon her and dwelt over her for a
space, seeking out, as it were, the motive beneath the question.

"Neil," he answered deliberately when the scrutiny had satisfied him.

"Injun talk," Jees Uck interposed, glibly manufacturing languages on the
spur of the moment. "Him Injun talk, _nee-al_ all the same 'cracker.'
Him baby, him like cracker; him cry for cracker. Him say, '_Nee-al_,
_nee-al_,' all time him say, '_Nee-al_.' Then I say that um name. So
um name all time Nee-al."

Never did sound more blessed fall upon Neil Bonner's ear than that lie
from Jees Uck's lips. It was the cue, and he knew there was reason for
Kitty's untroubled brow.

"And his father?" Kitty asked. "He must be a fine man."

"Oo-a, yes," was the reply. "Um father fine man. Sure!"

"Did you know him, Neil?" queried Kitty.

"Know him? Most intimately," Neil answered, and harked back to dreary
Twenty Mile and the man alone in the silence with his thoughts.

And here might well end the story of Jees Uck but for the crown she put
upon her renunciation. When she returned to the North to dwell in her
grand log-house, John Thompson found that the P. C. Company could make a
shift somehow to carry on its business without his aid. Also, the new
agent and the succeeding agents received instructions that the woman Jees
Uck should be given whatsoever goods and grub she desired, in whatsoever
quantities she ordered, and that no charge should be placed upon the
books. Further, the Company paid yearly to the woman Jees Uck a pension
of five thousand dollars.

When he had attained suitable age, Father Champreau laid hands upon the
boy, and the time was not long when Jees Uck received letters regularly
from the Jesuit college in Maryland. Later on these letters came from
Italy, and still later from France. And in the end there returned to
Alaska one Father Neil, a man mighty for good in the land, who loved his
mother and who ultimately went into a wider field and rose to high
authority in the order.

Jees Uck was a young woman when she went back into the North, and men
still looked upon her and yearned. But she lived straight, and no breath
was ever raised save in commendation. She stayed for a while with the