And a little later Alan put the question to Mary.

She, too, blushed, and in her eyes was a mysterious radiance that puzzled him.

“You must wait,” she said.

Beyond that she would say no word, though he pulled her head down, and with his hands in her soft, smooth hair threatened to hold her until she told him the secret.  Her answer was a satisfied little sigh, and she nestled her pink face against his neck, and whispered that she was content to accept the punishment.  So where Amuk Toolik had gone, and what he was doing, still remained a mystery.

A little later he knew he had guessed the truth.

“I don’t need a doctor,” he said, “but it was mighty thoughtful of you to send Amuk Toolik for one.”  Then he caught himself suddenly.  “What a senseless fool I am!  Of course there are others who need a doctor more than I do.”

Mary nodded.  “But I was thinking chiefly of you when I sent Amuk Toolik to Tanana.  He is riding Kauk, and should return almost any time now.”  And she turned her face away so that he could see only the pink tip of her ear.

“Very soon I will be on my feet and ready for travel,” he said.  “Then we will start for the States, as we planned.”

“You will have to go alone, Alan, for I shall be too busy fitting up the new house,” she replied, in such a quiet, composed, little voice that he was stunned.  “I have already given orders for the cutting of timber in the foothills, and Stampede and Amuk Toolik will begin construction very soon.  I am sorry you find your business in the States so important, Alan.  It will be a little lonesome with you away.”

He gasped.  “Mary!”

She did not turn. “Mary!”

He could see again that little, heart-like throb in her throat when she faced him.

And then he learned the secret, softly whispered, with sweet, warm lips pressed to his.

“It wasn’t a doctor I sent for, Alan.  It was a minister.  We need one to marry Stampede and Nawadlook and Tautuk and Keok.  Of course, you and I can wait—­”

But she never finished, for her lips were smothered with a love that brought a little sob of joy from her heart.

And then she whispered things to him which he had never guessed of Mary Standish, and never quite hoped to hear.  She was a little wild, a little reckless it may be, but what she said filled him with a happiness which he believed had never come to any other man in the world.  It was not her desire to return to the States at all.  She never wanted to return.  She wanted nothing down there, nothing that the Standish fortune-builders had left her, unless he could find some way of using it for the good of Alaska.  And even then she was afraid it might lead to the breaking of her dream.  For there was only one thing that would make her happy, and that was his world.  She wanted it just as it was—­the big tundras, his people, the herds, the mountains—­with