Björk’s little eyes glittered. His thin lips moved faintly, as if they, too, would have smiled had they ever learned the trick of it.
“And you came straight to Kwimkuk?” persisted Cheviot.
“No, he land oop by Sinook,” Christianson said. “He see dat not de place he vas shown in de visshun, and dose whaler fellows after him de next day. Björk hide in de scrub villow, and creep along vid hands and knees. After two days he come to a native camp. Next morning he see out dere dat Seagull comin’. But he haf anodder visshun. He know now he haf to get a squaw to hide him in de bottom ob a kyak, and take him like dat down de coast to Golovin. Terrible long journey! I am down dere on de shore, when de squaw beach de boat. I see Björk crawl out de hole in de middle, half dead, and look round. Look all round. Den I hear him say in Svedish, ‘Dis de place!’ and I say, ‘Vad Plads?’ leedle surprised, and he come right away up to me, and he say ‘De Lord sent me.’ So I see he vas de man I pray for.”
“Oh! And when he isn’t managing a boat—up at the mission, what does Mr. Björk do?”
“Oh, he help,” said Christianson, with unshakable satisfaction in the answer to his prayer. “Better as anybody he can preach.”
“Preach?” echoed Cheviot, not believing his ears.
“Yes, Björk not talk mooch, except vhen he is in de pulpit or vhen he haf a refelation.”
Well, they were odd Hausgenossen for Hildegarde’s father! “How long had Mr. Mar been with them,” Cheviot asked. Ten or eleven months. He had got to St. Michaels too late last year to reach the Klondike. He just had time to go and take a look at Golovin Bay, when the winter overtook him at Kwimkuk. So he stayed there.
But this summer? Well, he was taken ill just about the time the ice went out of the bay—no, no, he was all right now. Mrs. Christianson had nursed him. Christianson didn’t know what Mar’s plans were—doubted if anybody did; though he was laying in supplies for some sort of excursion. He once had an idea of going all the way to Teller Station to see the Government reindeer. That was Mar’s stuff, there, in the boat. Of course it was little use now to go to the Klondike. Besides, what incentive had a man of that age to face the hardships of prospecting in the arctic? It was no matter if such a man had not great fortune. He wouldn’t know how to use it. He had not, Mr. Christianson was sorry to say it, but Mr. Mar had not the true light.
From which Cheviot gathered that Mr. Mar had not contributed all he might to the cause of Righteousness. But it was a relief to know that he had not been in straits. “He seem to haf blenty to bay his bills”—so why had he come up there, caring neither for money nor for missions? Here Cheviot caught the momentary gleam in Björk’s little eyes. A question in them, but unspoken, like all else that went on in the close-cropped bullet head. Cheviot became aware that his old friend had somehow succeeded in making himself an object of intense curiosity to these queer folk.