“You’re quite as bad,” Hildegarde said to herself, but a glance at the face, with the look of doom in the eyes, made her set down his excitement, and the failure in fairly judging her, to the darkening of all things in the gathering shadow. “I suppose you think I have something very valuable here?” he said, suspiciously. “It wouldn’t be the first time in Alaska that something valuable has been wrapped in rags and left lying in a corner.” “Something like what I’ve got here?” he asked, as he took tighter hold on the oilskin. He should not think she was curious about his gold dust and his nuggets. She looked at Ky climbing with difficulty back to her place at the foot of the bed, and pointedly changed the subject. “Your dog is very lame.” He nodded. “Got one of her paws crushed.” To distract him from his brain-sick anxiety about the bundle, “How was that?” Hildegarde asked. No answer this time, only that same northward motion. “She must be very old,” Hildegarde pursued. “No.” “Your dog, I mean. Surely she is old.” “No. She got like that—up—” [Illustration: “‘I suppose you think I have something very valuable here?’”] He still clutched the oilskin with such anxious hands that Hildegarde felt it mere humanity to win him to forget his fears. So she looked away from the gaunt figure, over the threshold and over the surf to where the white sails of the _Beluga_ shone. “I’ve been ‘up yonder,’ too,” she said. “_What!_” “Yes, I’ve seen the North Siberian shore quite plain. I’ve been as far as the Bering Straits.” “Oh, the Bering Straits!” he echoed, as one inwardly amused at a traveler who should boast of getting as far as the adjoining county. “Yes, and—and I’d like to go further still.” “Better not—better not.” “But, of course, I would!” She put her hand in the pocket of her long cloak and drew out the “latest map” of extreme northwestern Alaska. “I’m like the rest. The more I see up here, the more I want to see.” She sat down on the earthen floor just inside the threshold, and spread out the yard square tinted paper. As she bent over it, “What part of the map lures you most?” she asked, wandering if she would hear where was the home of this curious being dying up here alone. As he did not answer at once, she looked up, laying her hand on the paper and saying, “This for me.” She saw him take surer hold on the packet he was guarding, and he leaned across it to see precisely what portion of the earth’s surface her hand was covering. “You want to know the name of the most interesting country in the world?” she asked smiling. “Well, what do you say?” He seemed to humor her. “The name of the most interesting country on the face of the globe is under my hand.” She lifted it. He peered down. She pushed the rustling paper across the uneven floor, till leaning over he could read, in big black letters, the word “UNEXPLORED.”