It was gray business waiting for this first summer of the century. What news might one expect from a man lost four years ago between Norway and Franz Josef Land? What from that other in the nearer-by North, where men dug gold and fought typhoid? What fatality was it that made of all hope and all desire a magnetic needle? Hildegarde remembered how Bella, to the question, “Why do you suppose there’s this mania among us for the North?” had answered, “I don’t know, unless it is that we have the South at home. Perhaps Hudson Bay people and Finlanders dream of the tropics. I don’t know. But I’ve heard nothing so afflicts a Canadian as hearing his country called ‘Our Lady of the Snows.’ I think there never was such a beautiful name. But it may be because I live with orange blossoms all about me.”
Certainly it was harder waiting without Bella. Together each year they had hoped for news. Now apart, they feared it.
Oddly enough, what helped Hildegarde through the heavy time was the establishment of an understanding, half incredulous, wholly unavowed, between her and her mother. It appeared she had Mrs. Mar on her side—else why did that lady save up every newspaper reference to the new gold-camp to read aloud as Hildegarde sat at her sewing. The most transcendent classic ever penned would be put aside for—
“‘Extracts from the note-book of Mr. McPherson, the third man to strike pay on the beach.
‘(They are absolutely correct, as I saw his diary and the mint returns for the gold, which were at the rate $19 an ounce, yielding him nearly $10,000.)
‘Aug. 11th.—Macomber and Levy: about a mile and a half from Anvil City. Here I got a nugget weighing $4. The nugget was found in the sand, about 250 feet from low tide. Jim Dunsmuir and William Bates told me that they had averaged $40 per day rocking. They were about eleven miles south of Anvil. Price, on No. 8 Anvil, Sunday, 20th of August, sluiced out $6,400 in seven hours, with six men. Lindblom took out $18,000 in eighteen hours, with six men, August 14th.
‘Aug. 29th.—Leidley made a wooden caisson and sunk it about 250 ft. beyond low tide, and got from fifteen to fifty cents per shovel. I did not see this experiment, but I believe firmly that the richest part of the beach is beyond low tide.
‘There will be more money come out from Nome than came from the Klondike.’”
“Here’s a column headed—