tracts of land and throw in the cow, they might have his farm close to town.

“Think of it!” Mark cried. “Right in town, you might say!”

“Y-e-s,” Florence agreed. “But then—” Already she had seen quite enough of the noisy, quarrelsome camp. And besides, there was the cow. Precious possession, old Boss. Cows were dear—milk was hardly to be had at any price. “And yet—” she sighed. Long tramps through the deep snow, with a wild Arctic blizzard beating her back, seemed to haunt her. “You’ll have to decide,” she said slowly. “It’s to be your home. I—I’m only a helper.”

Into this crisis there stepped an angel in disguise, an unimportant appearing, dark-faced angel, the older of the two Indian girls Florence had seen and aided back there at the dock in Anchorage. Now the girl, approaching timidly, drew Florence’s head down to the level of her own and whispered, “Don’t trade!”

“Why?” Florence whispered back.

“Don’t trade,” the Indian girl repeated. “Bye and bye I show you.” She was gone.

“What did she say?” Mark asked. Mark was slow, steady, thoughtful, dependable. Florence had no relative she liked so much.

“She says not to trade.” There was a look of uncertainty on the big girl’s face.

“Greasy little Indian girl,” Ramsey McGregor growled. “What does she know?”

“Might know a lot,” Mark wrinkled his brow. “What do you say?” he turned to the others. “No trade?”

“No trade, I’d say,” was Florence’s quick response.

“Al—alright. No trade.” Mary swallowed hard. She had wanted to be near town.

“Whatever you children want,” agreed the meek little mother. Life had pushed her about so long she was quite willing to take the strong arm of her son and to say, “You lead the way.”

“It’s a lot like playing a hunch,” Mark laughed uncertainly. “After all, the claim we got is the claim we drew. Looks like God intended it that way. Besides there’s old Boss. We couldn’t—”

“No, we couldn’t do without her,” Mary exclaimed. And so the matter was settled. Somewhere out there where the sun set would be their home.

Two hours later Florence and Mary were enjoying a strange ride. From some unsuspected source, the Indian girl had secured five shaggy dogs. These were hitched, not to a sled, for there was no snow, but to a narrow three-wheeled cart equipped with auto wheels. Whence had come those auto wheels? Florence did not ask, enough that they eased their way over the bumps along the narrow, uneven trail that might, in time, become a road.

The land they were passing over fascinated Mary, who had an eye for the beautiful. Now they passed through groves of sweet-scented, low-growing fir and spruce, now watched the pale green and white of quaking asp, and now went rolling over a low, level, treeless stretch where the early grass turned all to a luscious green, and white flowers stood out like stars.

The surprise of their journey came when, after passing through a wide stretch of timber, they arrived quite suddenly upon an open space.

“A clearing! A cabin! A lake!” Mary exclaimed. “How beautiful!”

It was indeed beautiful. True, the clearing showed signs of neglect, young trees had sprouted where a field had been, the door of the cabin, standing ajar, seemed to say, “Nobody’s home. Nobody’s been home for many a day.” For all that, the gray cabin, built of great, seasoned logs, the clearing sloping down to a small, deep lake, where a flock of wild ducks swam all unafraid, made a picture one would not soon forget.

“Come,” said the Indian girl. A moment later they stepped in awed silence across the threshold of the cabin.

The large room they entered was almost bare. A rustic table, two home-made chairs, a great sheet-iron barrel, fashioned into a stove, a few dishes in the corner, a rusted frying pan and a kettle, that was about all. Yet, strangely enough, as Florence tiptoed across the threshold she found herself listening for the slow tick-tock, tick-tock, of an old-fashioned clock. With all its desolation there was somehow about the place an air of “home.”

“Oh!” Mary breathed deeply. Then again, “Oh!”

A stout ladder led to a tall loft where a bed might, for all they could tell, be waiting. At the back was a door opening into the small kitchen.

“Home,” Florence breathed again.

“Home,” Mary echoed.

Then together they tiptoed out into the sunlight.

Quite unexpectedly, the Indian girl spoke. “This,” she said, spreading her arms wide to take in the cabin, the clearing and the lake beyond, “this is it.”

“Thi—this is what?” Mary stammered.

“This,” replied the girl, “is your land.”

“No!” Florence exclaimed. “It can’t be.”

“But yes, it is your farm.” The girl smiled a happy smile. “This is the number you drew.”

“Ours!” Florence whispered hoarsely. “An abandoned cabin, a clearing, a lake! All ours! And to think, we nearly missed it!” Then, quite wild with joy, she surprised the shy Indian girl by catching her up in her arms and kissing her on the cheek.

At that very moment, as if it were part of some strange drama, there sounded from the edge of the clearing a loud: “Get up! Go ’long there!” and a traveling rig as strange as their own burst from the edge of the timber.

A moment later, a little man on a high-wheeled, wobbly cart, shouted, “Whoa, January!” to his shaggy horse, then sat for a full moment staring at the three girls.

“You’re some of them new settlers?” he said at last.

Florence nodded. She was too much surprised to do more. The man, whose whiskers had grown for months all untrimmed and whose hair fell to his shoulders, looked as if he might have stepped from an illustration of Rip Van Winkle.

“This your place?” he asked. Again the girl nodded.

“Well,” his eyes swept the horizon, “you’re lucky maybe—and then again maybe not. There’s the clearin’ an’ the cabin, but maybe the cabin’s haunted.

“No—no, not by ghosts!” he held up a hand. “By people who once lived here. It’s a notion of mine, this business of houses being haunted by living folks.

“But then,” his voice dropped. “Mebby they’re dead. Some sort of foreigners they was, the ones that lived in this cabin. Came here durin’ the war. Lot of queer ones in the valley them days. Deserters, some of ’em. Some dodgin’ the draft. Some foreign spies.

“Big man, that one,” he nodded toward the cabin. “Big woman. Hard workers. Not much to say for themselves.

“One day they’d gone. Where? Why? No one knows. Spies, maybe. Government boat at Anchorage just at that time. Shot ’em, like as not, for spies.”

Florence shuddered.

“Maybe not,” the man went on. “Might come back—Chicaski was the name. Russians.”

“If—if they come back, can they claim the cabin?” Florence was thrown into sudden consternation.

“No-o. I guess not. Didn’t have no legal claim on it like as not. There’s other deserted cabins in the valley, lots of ’em. Folks got discouraged and quit. Raise plenty of things to eat. Can’t sell a thing. No market. Trap fox and mink, that’s all you can sell. Folks want things that don’t grow on land.

“Got to git along,” he exclaimed, clucking to his horse. “Live back there five miles, I do. I’ll be seein’ you.

“Git up! Go ’long there!” The strange little man gave his