And now spring was here. Although still far too early for such forecasting, both felt the need of returning to Valdivia, to be within easier reach of papers, of telegrams, and of returning travelers. For all the world knew when once the spring was come up yonder, the summer followed hard. How natural it was to be looking forward to something great and wonderful that was to happen in June! Hildegarde and her father had done that as long ago as when the girl was in her early teens and Jack Galbraith expected back from his first arctic enterprise. What more natural than that Hildegarde and Bella should be doing very much the same to-day. To call their expectation by Mar’s name, merely gave it manageability. For, apart from Bella’s interdiction, the word “Galbraith” was, in this, like a hot iron. If it were to be touched in safety, some shield must come between you and the too ardent metal. “Galbraith” would scorch. But wrap “Mar” about the forbidden name, and you could use it to significant ends. Summer and Mr. Mar! Oh, Mr. Mar served well as symbol of that mightier issue, that both dared hope for out of this year’s opening of the ice gates of the North. And yet the month of wonder, June, went by without a word or a sign coming down from the top of the world. July brought a letter from the Klondike—Cheviot’s second. He had done well, and he was coming home. Hildegarde might look to see him by the next boat. No word of Mar; plain he hadn’t had Hildegarde’s news when he wrote. Not the next boat, however, nor the next, brought Cheviot, nor any word of Mr. Mar. “I don’t know how I should get through this time but for you, Bella.” Hildegarde and she were seldom apart. Not till mid-August came the sign from Mar, a letter written from a queer-sounding place in early June, a letter strangely short and non-committal. He had reached St. Michaels too late the previous autumn to go any further than Golovin Bay, before navigation closed. He would push on as soon as travel was practicable. He was well. He sent his love. And no more that summer. No more up to the time the boats stopped running in the autumn. Cheviot had not come after all. And silence, like the silence of the grave, wrapt the fate of that Other, on the far side of the world. “I shall burn a joss to those who travel by land or by sea, by snow or by ice,” said Bella, one day in December, and she lit the stick of incense on the flower altar, whence no heathen smoke of prayer had risen for a couple of years now. But more prayers than ever before had been offered up in the little white room. And what need of a face on the wall above the roses? The picture was not really shut away in a drawer. Vivid in each girl’s mind, it was borne about as faithfully, as in the old days, when on Hildegarde’s breast in a setting of silver it hung on a velvet string.