Another woman might have pointed out that she was in her sixty-second year. No one would have expected such an excuse from Mrs. Mar. There was something in her face Cheviot had never seen there before, as with obvious unwillingness she brought out the answer, “Hildegarde can do this errand best. At least, as far as concerns her father. Of course”—she recovered some of her native elasticity—“if _I_ went I’d get a claim, too. You’d see! I’d come home with a fortune. I doubt if Hildegarde does, though she has more in her than I’ve sometimes thought. Hildegarde won’t come to any harm.” Cheviot, too outraged for the moment to speak, got up and looked blindly for his hat. When he found that, he had also found his tongue. “The only comfort I can see in the miserable affair is that she’ll find two hundred dollars isn’t nearly enough. There isn’t a place on the globe where living costs as much as it does at Nome.” “She’s been saving up her allowance for a year.” Cheviot threw down his hat. “I tell you it would be mad for an able-bodied man to go with less than a thousand dollars margin.” “Hildegarde can’t raise anything like that. But she’ll have enough to get her there, and something over.” Cheviot looked at her. “You mean she’s ready to go without even enough for her return expenses?” “She says she can leave the question of returning.” “She knows we—her brothers will send out funds to get her back!” groaned Cheviot, beginning to walk up and down. “And she, _Hildegarde_, is willing to embarrass her father by being a charge on him?” “She won’t stay long. And Nome lots are selling for thousands. Her father has at least the land his tent stands on.” Cheviot struck his hands together in that startling if infrequent way of his. It made even Mrs. Mar rather nervous. “Go and argue with her yourself,” said the lady, with raised voice and a red spot glowing on either cheek. “I shouldn’t be able to move her. I never have been able to move Hildegarde. That’s the worst of these quiet people.” “You say that, and yet you aren’t really opposing her.” “Me? No,” said Mrs. Mar, fixing him with unflinching eyes. “I’m making up the deficit.” Cheviot had never before longed to murder a fellow creature. “You realize, of course,” he said quietly, “she isn’t even sure of finding her father alive.” Angry as he was, when he saw the look that thrust brought to Mrs. Mar’s face, he was sorry he had presented it so mercilessly. “What she’ll probably find,” he hurried on to say, “is that Mr. Mar has gone to the Casa da Paga. That was his plan. Or the Fox River—or God knows where.” “If she goes as far as Nome, she’ll be able to go still further,” said Hildegarde’s mother, though her voice wasn’t as steady as her words implied. “I understand you, then, at last!” Cheviot stopped before her with anger-lit eyes. “You are ready to see a young girl—” “Not every girl.” “A girl like Hildegarde.” “Precisely, one like Hildegarde. She can do it.”