“So that is what he’s like,” she whispered to herself. “How strange! How wonderful! And yet—”
It was a sober Florence who, after sending word to her cousins regarding this, her proposed journey, climbed aboard the large gray monoplane. “This,” she was thinking, “is to be my most exciting adventure. I wonder how it will end?” How indeed? Seldom does a girl go in search of her grandfather. And how her ideas of that grandfather had changed! She had always known, in a sketchy manner, the story of her grandfather’s life. A big, boisterous, fun-loving youth, little more than a boy, he had loved and married a beautiful, frail girl from a proud well-to-do family. That girl became Florence’s grandmother.
Tom Kennedy was not loved by his wife’s parents. They made life hard for him. When at last life under his own roof became unbearable, he had found escape by joining the gold rush to Alaska.
Alaska brought more hardships, cold, hunger, and disappointment. And after that, months on the way, a letter reached him, saying that his wife was dead and that, without his consent, her parents had adopted his only child, a girl. That girl had been Florence’s mother.
From that day, Tom Kennedy was lost to the outside world. “But Alaska,” Florence thought, with a tightening at the throat, “Alaska, it would seem, came to know and love him. And now—”
Ah, yes—and now. She had always thought of Tom Kennedy as a typical prospector, like Malcomb Dale, who had lured Bill from his ranch. And now here he was, not rich, but loved and respected. She was going to him. The large gray plane, drumming steadily onward, carried her over broad stretches of timber, frozen lakes, arms of the sea, on and on and on, toward Tom Kennedy, her grandfather. And how would he receive her?
The answer to this question came when, four days later, a little breathless, but quite determined, she stood at the door of a weather-beaten cabin, on the outskirts of Nome.
“Come in!” a large, hearty voice roared.
It was with uncertain movements that she lifted the iron latch, pushed the door open and stepped inside.
“I—I beg your pardon, Miss.” A tall man, with keen gray eyes that matched his well-trimmed beard, rose hastily to his feet. “I thought it was one of the boys. And it’s you, a stranger and a girl.”