a little boy playing with wooden money." What value had gold on the
Island of Kon Klayu, she thought, where it could not buy an ounce of food?

To Ellen Boreland these were days of anguished conjecture, of harassed
indecision. As they passed with no sign of the _Hoonah_ she began to
recall her last week at Katleean. On the screen of her mind appeared
over and over again the White Chief's dark face, in her ears the voice of
memory repeated his softly-spoken, enigmatic words: "Remember . . .
you'll want me. . . . The pigeon loose, comes back . . . I will
understand."

The _Hoonah_ was overdue. . . . Was this then what he had meant? Was he
now holding the schooner believing that in her anxiety for the safety of
her loved ones she would release the bird? Was he trying to force her,
at such a cost, to buy from him the lives of those dear to her? . . .
Had he planned this thing from the beginning? Was he even now at the
post waiting--certain that eventually she must release the pigeon? The
picture unnerved her to the point of panic. And yet she tried to
reassure herself. No man, however cruel and pitiless, could deliberately
plan so monstrous a thing. She tried to find excuses for the non-arrival
of the _Hoonah_. . . . Perhaps the fall steamer had not come in on
time. . . . Perhaps some accident had happened and the White Chief was
having the schooner repaired. Surely he would come, if only to ascertain
the fate of his bookkeeper for whose safety Silvertip must account. But
Silvertip--had the Swede told the truth? Might he not have said that
young Harlan had preferred to stay behind and had been safely landed with
the party? Then it occurred to her with a fearful knowledge that to the
White Chief of Katleean the life of a man meant nothing.

While she went about her household duties there came to her again and
again the sound of the white trader's sardonic: "I have presented your
_son_ with a pigeon." Not to her, nor to Jean had he given the bird, but
deliberately he had made a present of it to her little boy that Loll
might innocently love and care for the thing designed to be the symbol of
his mother's shame!

To her harassed mind the bird came to have a hideous vitality. There was
something uncanny in the way it thrived in its captivity--as though it
fed on her distress. And almost like a conspiracy was the determination
of her loved ones to preserve it. Loll was devoted to it, especially now
sin