"But, Father, please use the stick, because you must not be grown strong too rapidly. It may cause comment, and you must not excite suspicion of our good fortune, and why we came here today. Leave the stick where you will tomorrow, but take it with you today," she urged laughingly, and with eyes twinkling.
"To be sure,—to be sure. I forgot. I will not expose your secret, child; have no fear."
With that they turned their faces toward home. Flowers nodded gaily on all sides, and soon replaced the luncheon in their basket.
Mosses, green and velvety, sank beneath the pressure of each foot-fall, and a brood of eaglets tested their pinions near the crag above the trail.
Right glad was Fedor Michaelovitz before reaching home that he had listened to Eyllen and carried his walking stick. Without its support he would have found much more tedious the long walk from the mountains.
A hot supper, a pipe full of tobacco and a restful evening, however, restored him, especially as Shismakoff made his appearance all spick and span after his day's work on the water. The recital of his adventures with a school of whale in mid-ocean, and the capture of one of them, occupied a good share of the evening. Eyllen's father asked many questions relative to the subject. To these were supplemented the queries of the youngster, whose large dark eyes fairly stood out upon his cheeks with wonder at the tale. To say that the boy's admiration for Shismakoff was thereafter greatly augmented would be speaking much too mildly. From that day, the young man was looked upon by him as a hero who needed only a following of soldiers to make him a real general.
In this way the evening passed with slight reference to the tramp of Eyllen and her father in the mountains, much to the girl's satisfaction.
Her mind was now relieved. Work upon her baskets was again taken up, and perseveringly done. Michaelovitz, with walking stick in hand, tramped among the hills alone often, considering it the affair of no one that a pick and shovel did honest duty in his hands during the day, and lay secreted beneath the rocks near the little spring when he returned to his cabin at night-fall. If his capacious coat pockets contained bread slices in the morning, it was empty by evening, and his hands full of blossoms then quickly pacified the children he met in the village.
At times Eyllen accompanied her father. Then, at his direction, by the use of her mysterious instinct for minerals, she could trace still further the treasure-filled ledges from the spring or ore shute where her initial discovery had been made. By this means, several hundred feet of gold-bearing ledges were located and staked by the girl and her father, whose active labor in the open air, along with a brightened future and more encouraging life prospects, soon caused the man to grow strong and well again. Shismakoff and Eyllen became more fond of each other day by day, until at last it was beyond his patience to endure uncertainty longer, and he told her of his great love, begging for a response in the form of a promise of marriage. To this the girl replied as he desired, taking no note of his reference to a lack of exchequer, and that he must go away from the islands in order to make money more rapidly.
A few days afterwards, Michaelovitz invited the young man to join himself and daughter in a ramble to the hills. Eyllen thought it was no harm to give the whales and fishes one day more of freedom, she said, and his boat needed caulking. She insisted that the boat must be made entirely seaworthy, now that it must carry her future husband; and she could not endure the thought of his life being in danger.