“Blanks! I don’t want any blanks.” “Certificate forms.” “Oh—well, look and see,” she said peremptorily, with her glance at the clock. Out of his breast pocket Blumpitty slowly took some papers. “Only a dirty one,” he said sadly. “Well, fill it out. There’s pen and ink on that table.” She was counting bills on her lap. Blumpitty stood vaguely looking round in a lost sort of way, just as though time weren’t priceless and Harry’s return at any moment likely to complicate, if not checkmate, “the deal.” “Here.” Mrs. Mar jumped up and put a chair in front of the little writing-table. Then smartly she tapped the silver-topped ink-bottle, as though she doubted his having the sense to know what it was unless she made some sort of demonstration in its neighborhood. She even illustrated the fact that the lid lifted up. Slowly Blumpitty had come over to the spindle-legged table, and now sat in a heap in front of it, looking into the ink. Mrs. Mar whisked a pen out of the rack and pushed it into Blumpitty’s slow fingers. “And here in this envelop is $300.” She took it out and counted it over, under his dull eyes. “But I’ll keep it till Harry comes back and says it’s all right about the ticket. We can just exchange envelops without saying anything further. Understand?” She felt a well-nigh irresistible impulse to shake Blumpitty, but instead of doing that, there she was signing a paper, after taking care to read it twice, in spite of the pressure of time. And now, although she still held both this document and the three hundred dollars in her own hands, she was conscious of qualms. [Illustration: Hildegarde’s mother and Mr. Blumpitty] “I suppose you’ll be sinking a deal of good hard money in that creek of yours this summer, whether you get any out or not.” “They’s plenty of work there,” he said, foggier than ever, “but I got more’n that to do this summer.” “What do you mean?” He looked at her with that curious sort of vagueness that gives one an impression of hearing a man talk in his sleep. You feel it would be unfair to hold him quite responsible. “When I’ve got the work started all right on Glaysher, I got to take two or three people I c’n trust an’ go up to a place northwest o’ Nome.” “What place?” “Polaris.” “What do you want to go there for, when you’ve got nineteen claims to look after on Glacier—” “Them nineteen claims is valyerble property, and Blumpitty & Co.’s goin’ to pay handsome dividends. This time next year—” “Well, what do you want more than that?” He paused, and then in that same somnambulist tone, “I wusn’t lookin’ fur it,” he said, “I jest tumbled on it.” “What?” “A great big thing up by Polaris. Bigger’n anything Blumpitty & Co. have got on Glaysher. Bigger’n anything any company’s got anywhere.” Impossible to think a man boastful or even over-sanguine, who spoke so wearily, with yellow-gray face so unlit, with air and attitude so joyless. “It’ll make millionaires of a good many people.”