“It isn’t true. The Klondike was a totally different proposition. The people who got to the Klondike the year of the rush were all picked men—a few women, yes, I admit, a few women—God help them. But the mob—a rascally crew enough, lots of them—but they were men of some means, men of brawn and muscle and mighty purpose or, simply, they didn’t survive. If they weren’t like that, they turned back as thousands did, from Juneau, from Skagway, from Dyea—or they fell out a little further on. Didn’t I see them on the Dalton trail and the Chilcoot Pass, glad to lie down and die? I tell you, only the hardiest attempted it, and only the toughest survived. _That’s_ the sort of pioneer that peopled the Klondike. Nome’s another story. Nome’s accessible by sea. Any wastrel who can raise the paltry price of his passage can reach the American gold-fields. Any family disgrace can be got rid of cheap by shipping him to Nome. Any creature who’s failed at everything else under the sun has this last chance left. Be sure he’ll go to Nome—_with Hildegarde_! Good God! Drunkards, sharpers, men—and women, too (oh, yes, that sort!), and people hovering on the border line of crime or well beyond it—_they’ll_ fill the north-bound ships. Hildegarde alone with such a crew!” Cheviot jumped to his feet. “I’d infinitely rather a sister of mine were struggling with a pack on her back over the Chilcoot Pass along with the Klondike men of ’97, than see her shut up on board a ship with the horde that will go to Nome.” He walked up and down the little inner office, his eyes bright with anger and with fear. And he added terrors not to be put before the girl herself, but for the mother, if Hildegarde should be obdurate. “Make her understand that Nome this summer will be the dump-heap of the world.” “I did,” said Trenn, distractedly. “I gave her my opinion of what they were like—those other women she quoted who had gone. It wasn’t even news to her!” “What! She accepted that?” Trenn looked profoundly humiliated. Any nice girl would have pretended she couldn’t credit such a state of things, even if she’d heard them hinted. But Hildegarde had said gravely, “Yes, I know what you mean, miserable women have done it for horrible ends. It’s that that makes me ashamed to hesitate. Can’t a girl venture as much for a good end as those others for—” “Oh, Hildegarde’s mad!” said Trenn, with a flush on his handsome face. “Nevertheless, she’ll go,” said Harry. “But Mrs. Mar! What’s she about?” Cheviot went to see. * * * * * “You surely don’t mean to let her go?” “My good man, I’d like nothing better than to go myself.” “Then why don’t you?” demanded Cheviot rudely.