"No, little girl."
"Yes, I can't tell you how afraid I am. The country's so savage and lonely; the men are so like brute beasts; the women—well, they're worse. And here are we in the midst of it. I don't know what's going to become of us."
"Well, Berna, if it's like that, why don't you and your grandfather turn back? Why go on?"
"He will never turn back. He'll go on till he dies. He only knows one word of English and that's Klondike, Klondike. He mutters it a thousand times a day. He has visions of gold, glittering heaps of it, and he'll stagger and struggle on till he finds it."
"But can't you reason with him?"
"Oh, it's all no use. He's had a dream. He's like a man that's crazy. He thinks he has been chosen, and that to him will a great treasure be revealed. You might as well reason with a stone. All I can do is to follow him, is to take care of him."
"What about the Winklesteins, Berna?"
"Oh, they're at the bottom of it all. It is they who have inflamed his mind. He has a little money, the savings of a lifetime, about two thousand dollars; and ever since he came to this country, they've been trying to get it. They ran a little restaurant in New York. They tried to get him to put his little store in that. Now they are using the gold as a bait, and luring him up here. They'll rob and kill him in the end, and the cruel part is—he's not greedy, he doesn't want it for himself—but for me. That's what breaks my heart."
"Surely you're mistaken, Berna; they can't be so bad as that."
"Bad! I tell you they're vile. The man's a worm, and the woman, she's a devil incarnate. She's so strong and so violent in her tempers that when she gets drinking—well, it's just awful. I should know it, I lived with them for three years."