Seymour reassured her, telling of the precaution he had taken to cover his visit by establishing camp near by. He pointed to the bucket. "Anyone seeing me come here with this, surely must take me for a borrowing neighbor, don't you think? Already I've been spotted as a scout for a gold-dredging outfit with designs on the Cheena."
"Then, brother, if you'll pardon me, I'll hand you over to Moira," said the Missionary. "I'm engaged in a vital work—nothing less than the translation of the Epistles into Chinook. I try to leave all temporal affairs to my daughter and my niece for my time is short—my time is short. You will find her most competent and more fully informed in the details of this outrageous intrigue than I am myself. In this grievous time of turmoil which has befallen us, I thank the good Lord every hour for the return of such a daughter."
"Father, dear!" she gently hushed him.
While the girl was engaged in settling him at a table near a window and arranging his books and papers, Seymour glanced about the comfortable living room. Every stick of furniture, he perceived, was frontier made. The few wall decorations were Indian handiwork—rude carvings in wood, garishly painted; reed basketry of beautiful design; a bow and arrows, canoe paddles. The floor coverings were skins that had never been in the hands of a professional taxidermist. There was an air of home about the place never to be found in the quarters of the longest established police detachments. In this instance, probably, it was the touch of Ruth, the grieving cousin, or of Moira herself before she had put into the Far North in behalf of her supposedly vagrant brother.
He crossed to the fireplace in which cedar logs were in a crackling blaze. Its rock was native galena in which the brownish stains of iron predominated, but so besprinkled was it with mineral facets as to look alive where the fire played upon it. On the mantel were a totem pole and several pieces of carved ivory but no trace of "Outside," not even a phonograph. Either Moira and Ruth were satisfied with existence in the wild or did not wish to be reminded of civilization.
When Moira rejoined him after having settled her father at his self-assigned task, Seymour was fingering idly several specimens of heavy, grayish mineral which lay at the end of the mantel.
"Frog-gold, my father calls that stuff," said the girl. "It's the plague of our Glacier Creek placers, cluttering up our sluices and utterly worthless except in rare instances, such as——"
She ran her eyes over the specimens and picked out one that was shaped curiously like a human hand. In the gray palm was a small nugget of gold, worth possibly a dollar.
"Take this one as a souvenir of your first visit to the mission," she said, and held it out to him.
He had been on the point of asking her for one of the curios, because of a possible connection with the case that had occurred to him, so accepted the gift gladly.