her nodded slowly. "I see. You
probably said, 'That Guth is a Jew and he'll do me up if he can.'
Well, I am a Jew, yes, and I am proud of it; but I am an honest man,
too, like you."

Folsom turned to the wall and hid his face in the crook of his arm,
but with his other hand he groped for that of the Hebrew.

The story of the Lulu is history now; in all the north that mine is
famous, for it made half a dozen fortunes. In a daze, half doubting
the reality of things, Folsom watched a golden stream pour into his
lap. All that winter and the next summer the Lulu yielded wondrously,
but one of the partners was not happy, his thoughts being ever of the
woman who had left him. Prosperity gave him courage, however, and when
he discovered that Lois had not remarried he determined to press his
luck as a gambler should.

When the second season's sluicing was over and the ground had frozen
he went outside.

The day after he sailed Lois arrived in Nome, on the last boat. She
was older, graver; she had heard of the Lulu, but it was not that
which had brought her back. She had returned in spite of the Lulu to
solve an aching mystery and to learn the why of things. Her husband's
riches--she still considered him her husband--merely made the task
more trying.

Advised that Folsom had passed almost within hailing distance of her,
she pressed her lips together and took up her problem of living. The
prospect of another lonely Alaskan winter frightened her, and yet
because of the Lulu she could not return by the ship she had come on.
Now that Folsom was a Croesus she could not follow him too closely--he
might misunderstand. After all, she reflected, it mattered little to
her where she lived.

Guth called at her cabin, but she managed to avoid seeing him, and
somehow continued to avoid a meeting.

Late in December some travelers from Candle Creek, while breaking a
short cut to the head of Crooked River, came upon an abandoned sled
and its impedimenta. Snow and rain and summer sun had bleached its
wood, its runners were red streaks of rust, its rawhide lashings had
been eaten off, but snugly rolled inside the tarpaulin was a sack
of mail. This mail the travelers brought in with them, and the Nome
newspapers, in commenting upon the find, reprinted the story of that
tragic fight for life in the Arctic hurricane, now almost forgotten.

Folsom's three letters reached their destination on Christmas Day.
They were stained and yellow and bl