“Gone? Yes. Where’s your mother, Hildegarde?” Mar asked with unheard-of briskness. “She’s over at the Coxes’.” “Ah!” A moment’s pause, and then, “To think of Cheviot! Cheviot of all men! Weren’t you surprised?” “You aren’t talking about the Klondike?” “What else should I be talking of?” he demanded unreasonably, for after all there were other topics. “Do you think he really means it?” Hildegarde asked. “_Means_ it?—with a year’s leave granted, and his ticket in his pocket? He’s been getting ready all this week. That’s why we haven’t seen him. Sails Wednesday.” “Not—not really!” “Off to ’Frisco to-morrow,” said her father, still in that odd brisk voice—“four days to see about his outfit. He—it’s a queer world!—he said Trenn had been into the bank this afternoon, and offered to grubstake him. But Cheviot’s got money. So anything he finds will be his own. Trenn! H’m! _Trenn!_” he repeated, as though he couldn’t get over it. Then it seemed to dawn upon him that Hildegarde had been unprepared for something else than her brother’s part in the affair. “I thought Cheviot said he’d been talking to you about it—had said good-by.” “I—I didn’t believe he was in earnest.” “Why not?” demanded her father a little harshly, and then, perceiving that her incredulity might have other grounds than disapproval of the enterprise in itself, he said more gently: “He talks very sensibly about it, my dear. A man can’t save much at the bank—he may go on for thirty years and find—Cheviot has seen what that may come to. He gives himself a nine months’ holiday, with the chance of its turning out the most profitable nine months of his life. _I_ didn’t discourage him.” Hildegarde sat down on the step. “Oh, you didn’t discourage him,” she repeated dully. Behind her own sense of being wronged in some way, as well as disappointed, she was conscious of an unwonted excitement in her father. He, sitting there in the dusk, puffing out great clouds of smoke, was oblivious of everything except that the old pride of discovery had awaked in him, and the fever of his youth came back. “Even Cheviot! And think of _Trenn_!” That Trenn should be looking about for some one to send to the North on this errand—it touched the topmost pinnacle of the fabulous. And yet, why not? The country was aflame. Thousands starting off on an uncertainty to try for the thing he, Nathaniel Mar, had been certain of. “Hildegarde, where is your mother?” “I told you, at the Coxes’.” “Oh, at the Coxes’.” “Why, father?” “Would you like to know the reason I didn’t discourage Cheviot from going to the—” “Yes, father,” said the girl dully. “Then come nearer.” She moved toward him. Feeling a little dreary, she came quite close. She laid her head against the one strong knee.