“Miss Fielding, I am a lonely old man and I was wondering if you would mind my telling you something that has worried me greatly for some time past.”
Ruth felt surprised but professed her genuine interest in anything he might have to say to her.
“Thank you, my dear,” he said gratefully, and for a moment his eyes sought the hazy horizon where it merged with the gray of the sea.
“If you were not going fairly into their territory, I might not tell you this,” he said at last. “But since you are going there and because, being a girl, I feel that you may be interested in the troubles of two other girls nearly your own age, I would like to tell you about Mary and Ellen.”
“Mary and Ellen,” Ruth repeated softly. “How pretty they sound when you put them together, like the names in a story book.”
“Their adventures would read like a story, too.” The old man nodded, his face grave. “Only in real life these adventures are not so pleasant.
“These two girls,” he went on after a short pause, “are the daughters of a very dear friend of mine. His name was Maurice Chase. As young men together, he and my son were practically inseparable, and later—later Maurice took the place of a son to me.
“It was only when his health failed and he was threatened with tuberculosis that he thought of going to Alaska, not only for his health’s sake but with some wild scheme for making his fortune in the gold fields.”
“Lots of people have done that before him,” said Ruth.
“Yes; but not middle-aged men with two nearly grown daughters to support, and with lung trouble to combat, too. It was an unequal fight, so unequal that death conquered after only two years of experiment in the gold fields.”