A half hour later, while Patsy was out having her picture taken, Marian walked slowly up and down the room. She was thinking, and her thoughts were long, long thoughts.
“I like her,” she said at last. “I’m going to like her more and more. But it’s going to be hard for her sometimes, fearfully hard. When the blizzards sweep in from the north and we’re all shut in; when no one comes and no one goes, and the nights are twenty hours long; when the dogs howl their lonesome song—it’s going to be hard for her then. But I’ll do the best I can for her. Her father was right—it will do her a world of good. It will teach her the slow and steady patience of those who live in the North, and that’s a good thing to know.”
Three weeks later the two girls, toiling wearily along after two reindeer sleds, approached the black bulk of the old scow in the river, the one in which Marian had seen the mysterious purple flame. Again it was night. They were on their way north to the reindeer herd. Traveling over the first soft snow of winter, they had made twenty miles that day. For the last hour Patsy had not uttered a single word. She had tramped doggedly after the sled. Only her drooping shoulders told how weary she was. Marian had hoped against hope that they would this time find the old dredge deserted.
“It would make a nice dry place to camp,” she said to herself, as she brought her reindeer to a halt and stood studying the dark bulk. Patsy dropped wearily down upon a loaded sled.
Just as Marian was about to give the word to go forward, there flashed across the square window a jet of purple flame.
“Oh!” exclaimed Marian.
“What is it?” asked Patsy.
“The purple flame!”
“The purple flame? What’s that?”
“You know as much as I do; only I know it’s there in that old dredge. And since it’s there, we can’t stop here for the night. We must go on.”