"Shure, ye can," she answered in reply to my question about spending the night there. "Ye'll spread yer robe an' blankets on the flure, an' it'll only cost ye a dollar an' four bits. Ye'll plaze pay in advance."
I took stock of the contents of my pocketbook. There was just five dollars and a quarter left of the thousand dollars with which I had started from home on the first of May. It was now the first of September, and no more money was due me until the next spring. My food and tent were on the steamboat and would not be likely to come ashore for many days. It was Sunday evening, and a whole week must elapse before I could take up a collection.
I paid my landlady and she put my blankets by her stove to dry. I paid another dollar and a half for a supper of beans and flap-jacks—the first food I had tasted for three days. I slept soundly that night on the floor, without a care or anxiety. The next morning I paid another dollar and a half for breakfast, and could not resist the temptation of purchasing a Seattle paper (only three weeks old—what a luxury!). I had just twenty-five cents left—and I was a stranger in this strange corner of the earth!
I could not help laughing at my predicament as I entered the Alaska Exploration Company's store. A bearded man standing by the stove bade me "good-morning."
"You seem to be pleased about something," he said. "Have you struck it rich?"
"Well, yes!" I replied; "a rich joke on me," and I told him of the fix I was in.
"What? You are Dr. Young?" he exclaimed, shaking me heartily by the hand. "Why, I'm a Presbyterian elder from San Francisco."
The man's name was Fickus, a carpenter, who had come to Nome to build the store and warehouses of one of the big companies. He had held the first religious meetings in the new camp and had found quite a circle of Christian people.
He offered to lend me money, but I refused to take it. "No," I said, "let us wait and see what happens."
Something happened very quickly. While we were talking a young man entered the store and came up to me.