Even though he hadn’t one he loved the idea of home. He loved his friends and all the friendlier aspect of the earth, gardens, ordered communities of his kind, and all man’s device for socializing life and regulating the unruliness of nature.
And there was Hildegarde—who had not answered either of his two letters. Why was that? He felt a contraction of the heart as he refused to allow himself to formulate surmise; yet if any one had come and said to him, “Galbraith’s in Valdivia,” he would have felt it no surprise.
Some friends of his were going out by the Yukon River route. He knew it to be unlikely that he should return to this part of the world. As well see that more western aspect of it, too, since he might do so in congenial company.
It was really the company that decided him—that was responsible for a circumstance that changed the entire course of his own and several other lives. Instead of going back as he had come, by the shorter way, he found himself, at the end of July, with seventeen hundred miles of river behind him waiting at the mouth of the Yukon for the San Francisco steamer.
He heard with surprise that there was a letter for him at the post-office. The more strange, if true, since his coming to St. Michaels was less than mere chance—it had been unlikely in the extreme.
However, upon demand, an envelop appeared in the window of the little post-office. Before ever it reached the hand of the man waiting without, he recognized Hildegarde’s writing. He tore it open to read a hurried resumé of what she said she had already written him at length, to Dyea and to Dawson, and now repeated, on the bare possibility of his taking the American route home. For her father was just setting out by that same route to the far North, and by the same ship that carried her letter. His plan of campaign was not generally known, and all she could say with certainty was that he would be at St. Michaels some time in August. And she greatly hoped that if Cheviot should be passing that way, or even if he found that he could arrange to go there without too great personal cost, Hildegarde hoped, and even begged, that he would look out for her father. She “quite approved,” Cheviot read with incredulous eyes—(Hildegarde! who had thought the expedition mad for a man young and sound as an oak)—she quite approved her father’s going. At the same time she did not forget that he was no longer young, and being so lame was at a disadvantage. “Good Lord! I should say so!” The upshot was that she “lived upon the hope” that Cheviot would bring her news of Mr. Mar. The ideal thing would be that they should come home together. If Cheviot brought that about she would be “unendingly grateful.”
No syllable about Galbraith.
Cheviot went straight to the Alaska Commercial Company’s hotel and looked through the names registered since the season opened. Not a Mar among them. So the ship that brought the letter had not brought Mr. Mar—for this was the only conceivable place he could have stayed in. It was no small personal relief to Cheviot to conclude that wiser counsels had prevailed.
The same afternoon it was noised about the office that a steamer had just been sighted. After all, Mar might only be delayed! While most of the population rushed down to the beach, Cheviot scribbled a hasty note and handed it to the clerk.
“If a man of that name should come in on this ship—” he began.