The Arctic Cap had vanished from the ship. Every one else able to be afoot appeared on deck the next morning in the clear and strangely milder weather. Even the purser was abroad, passing by with averted eye, receiving haughtily the homage of the fair who hastened to inquire after his health, thereby further emphasizing Miss Mar’s neglect. She sat watchful but silent in the sunshine, drinking in the air that seemed to bring a blessing with it from some golden land that yesterday had been far off, and that to-day was very near. Mrs. Blumpitty had resumed the perpendicular and her most cheerful air. All the Blumpitty “outfit” in the best of spirits. The business woman to the company was exhibiting her vaunted competency in “dealing with men” and “affairs” by industrious prosecution of her flirtation with the oldest dentist. Shifting groups of lawyers, “judges,” senators, were cheerfully objurgating the mining laws. The lean bean-feaster, who between meals was for ever chewing gum, paused in his nervous pacing of the deck, though not in his labor of mastication, to assure ex-Governor Reinhart that he was “dead wrong.” This seemed, on the face of it, improbable. But Reinhart condescended to remind him, “Nome isn’t like any other camp. Wait till you see the state of things _there_.” “Have.” “Been there?” The bean-feaster had an audience before you could wink, for he had nodded, chewing harder than ever. Then a pause long enough for him to say modestly, “I’m the man appointed by the Nome miners to go in the commission to Washington and report.” “Why didn’t you go?” “Did. Coming back now.” With immense respect all within earshot listened to the disquisition on Alaskan mining laws, and the bean-feaster’s modest assurance that through his exertions they were being amended. Some one aft in the steerage was playing the fiddle, and a couple of darkies were dancing. The older woman is Mrs. L’Estrange’s cook, and Mrs. L’Estrange is the Southern lady of fallen fortunes who is going, with a store of fine damask and all her family silver, to open a high-class boarding-house at Nome! She had read of Mrs. Millicent Egerton Finney, who, in the Klondike, by this means, had made a “pile.” Mrs. Locke’s admirer, Mr. Meyer, was displaying a small working model of a superfine contrivance, only to discover that every man on the ship had a superfine contrivance of his own which was the grandest thing on earth in the way of gold-saving. Many of the people, as they moved from group to group, greeted Mrs. Locke and Miss Mar; but to Hildegarde’s intent eye all other faces were just merely not the one under the arctic cap. Her companion watched the whale birds that swarmed so low this morning over the water. Every now and then a fountain spouted up into the sunshine.