Kayak Bill was the first to find voice.

"By the roarin' Jasus,"—his tones trembled with enormous astonishment—"if it ain't young Harlan!"

"My God, Gregg, has anything happened to the schooner?" shouted
Boreland, his long stride covering the distance to the porch.

"Not a thing that I know of, Skipper." The young man, with a weary gesture, brushed the hair back from his forehead upon which blood from a slight wound had dried. "But you see I left her before she started back to Katleean." In answer to the quick questioning in the five pairs of eyes raised to his he stammered: "I—I—wanted to come—ashore—for a few minutes, and—I—I—the current carried me onto the reefs at the south end, and—I wandered in here a little while ago."

Bruises and deep scratches marred the whiteness of his slim body, and bore evidence of a desperate struggle with the sea and rocks. He was the last person in the world that Ellen would have chosen to be thus romantically cast up on the shores of Kon Klayu with them, but woman is potentially a mother and even her heart was touched by his plight. For Harlan, trying—and failing—to appear nonchalant and at ease in his embarrassing situation was boyishly appealing.

"Why, Shane, then the poor fellow hasn't had a bite to eat since yesterday," she exclaimed practically, while preparing to divest herself of her pack. "Everybody get busy here and we'll get him some lunch. Shane, you and Kayak see what you can spare in the way of clothes, and in the meantime, Mr. Harlan—" her conventionally polite tone as she turned to that young man caused Boreland and Kayak Bill to exchange an amused wink—"you may take this blanket that Jean has wrapped about her violin, and put it around you."

A few minutes later Kayak Bill filled the coffee pot from a small crystal spring that trickled from the hillside into a sunken, moss-grown barrel, and placed it over a bonfire Boreland had made. Ellen left the old man to prepare lunch for their unexpected guest, and followed Jean and Lollie into the cabin that was to be their home.

As she crossed the threshold the close, musty odor of decay smote her unpleasantly. The room had one tiny cobwebbed window through which the north light filtered. In the center a rough, home-made table, with one leg slanting inward, supported some battered cooking utensils now green with a fungus-like mould and disagreeably reminiscent of the Indian hunters who had last camped in the place, no one knew how long ago. In the corner where a stove had once stood, was a pile of damp soot and ashes, and the floor was littered with decaying woolen socks, old papers and rubber boots from which the tops had been cut to make a house-shoe known to Alaskan miners as "stags." Here and there daylight showed between the uncovered log walls, and great cobwebs wavered in dusty festoons from the chinking of brown peat. An infirm ladder leaned against one side of the room evidently for the purpose of mounting to the loft indicated by the black opening that yawned in the ceiling.

Ellen had no inclination to follow her sister into the little room that opened off the right. She was appalled at the amount of work to be done before the musty squalor of the place could be banished and the cabin made really habitable. For a moment she even considered the possibility of living in the tents until the White Chief brought the winter provisions, by which time she hoped she might be able to persuade her husband to leave the Island.

Boreland, coming into the room with the broom on his shoulder, interrupted her gloomy thoughts.

"Pretty snug little place, eh, El?" he said cheerfully, looking about him and lunging for the nearest cobweb with his broom. "The roof is good and when we get another window here facing the sea, and fix her up a bit, we'll be cozy as bears in a cave."

He filled his pipe, still warm from the last smoke, and lighted it. Going to the opening leading to the next room he called: "Clear out now, young ones. I'm going to start things going in here pretty pronto!"

Through the open cabin doorway Ellen could see Harlan sitting by the bonfire in a borrowed undershirt and the scarlet blanket. He seemed refreshed and strengthened by his lunch and was telling Kayak Bill of his failure to swim back to the Hoonah, and his subsequent landing on the south end of the Island. Though all but exhausted by his battle with the waves he had managed to dig himself into the dry, sun-warmed sand, and had slept heavily for hours. When he awoke the position of the sun told him that it must be morning. After washing the blood and sand from his scratches, he had set out to find the camp of the Borelands.

Harlan did not give any reason for his apparently senseless determination to swim ashore at the last moment, nor was any expected. On the frontier it is actions, not the reasons for them that are of moment. At the risk of appearing a fool Harlan kept silent on the subject. If he told now what he had heard of Kon Klayu that night he had lain in the top bunk at Silvertip's, there would be nothing for the Borelands to work for, nothing to hope for, during the time that must elapse before the Hoonah returned with the winter stores. The truth now would only arouse bitter thoughts of revenge in the heart of Boreland, who must chafe inwardly at his helplessness. There was time enough for the truth when the schooner returned to Kon Klayu.

"Over there on the east side of the Island, almost directly opposite to this point, I think, I found a sort of Eskimo hut made of whale ribs and peat and drift," Harlan was saying as Ellen came out of the cabin. "It isn't half bad, and with a little work I can make it fit to live in."

The young man saw Ellen and came to his feet. "I honestly don't know how to excuse myself for being here, Mrs. Boreland,"—there was a hint of wistfulness in the deep dark eyes he bent upon her—"but—I am here and dependent on your generosity until the schooner comes back. I'll try to be as little of a bother as I can. I was just telling Kayak about the hut I found on the other side of the Island. I'll live there."

Ellen's mind had already been busy with the problem of housing her unwelcome guest. She had not been blind to the interested and welcoming look Jean had given the young man as she greeted him half an hour before. She was aware of the almost inevitable result of propinquity. She looked up now with relieved interest and despite herself, with faintly quickening approval. By living on the other side of the Island, Harlan would in part solve the problem. She could then see to it that he saw little of Jean. If it were not for her sister, she might find it in her to like, though she could never approve of the good-looking young ne'er-do-well. Through Kayak Bill she had come to know part of the truth about the death of Naleenah, but like most good women, she could not bring herself fully to exonerate one who had been so compromised. Potentially, if not actually, Gregg Harlan was to her a squaw-man, and most certainly he was a drunkard.

"Well, Lady, me and him's goin' down to the North end of the Island for another load o' grub and camp gear," drawled Kayak Bill as he finished scouring out a burned place in the frying pan. "You can't tell a speck about how long this here weather's goin' to last and we want to get under cover soon as possible. Besides—" the old man's eyes twinkled—"Gregg here looks too durned lady-like in this la-de-dah outfit." He pointed to the scarlet blanket. "What he needs is a pair o' pants. Pants, I claim, has a powerful civilizin' and upliftin' influence on the mind o' man. Take the heathen now. They don't wear none, and see what——"

Kayak's threatened monologue was cut short by Boreland, who, having attacked the dirt and debris in the cabin appeared now and began to pile some of it on the fire.

After the old man and Harlan had gone, Boreland swept down the cobwebs and made the cabin ready for scrubbing. That sense of satisfaction and happiness which comes to those in the process of home-making in the wilderness, found expression in his rollicking Irish melody.

The legless Yukon stove was set up after the fashion of the country—an old packing box, found at the cabin, being filled with gravel and the stove put on top of it. A few minutes later there was a crackling fire of drift-wood and every pot and kettle brought from the camp that morning was full of heating water.

The floor of smooth boards, was unbelievably dirty. The lack of soap at first caused Ellen to despair of ever getting it clean, but Loll, who had watched Senott at Katleean cleaning her house, solved the problem by pouring sand on it while Boreland scrubbed with the broom.

Two hours later the clean bare floor was drying rapidly from the heat of the stove before which Ellen stood stirring a savory pot of duck mulligan for an early supper. . . .

It was late afternoon when Kayak and Harlan returned with their loads. As they turned in from the beach to the little grass-grown trail, Kayak stood a moment looking up at the silver smoke floating against the green hill. Jean, more starry-eyed than usual, was singing as she arranged the dishes on a canvas spread upon the floor of the porch, and at her direction Lollie was painstakingly placing some wild flowers in a tin can for a centerpiece. The two looked up to wave a welcome to the packers as they approached.

"By hell," said Kayak with slow appreciation, "it beats all creation how quick women folks can make a home out o' nothin'." . . .

After supper the men sat on the porch smoking and discussing ways of transferring the provisions from the north end of the Island.

"If we ever get a day calm enough so that we can use the whale-boat," said Boreland, "it won't take long to get the whole business down here. But we can't depend on that. I don't think the sea will get smooth enough this fall for us to bring the boat around the North Shoals. We'd better skid it across to this side of the Island—it can't be over a quarter of a mile wide there—and pack the grub over too. When a favorable day comes we can load her up and it's only a few miles down here. It's lucky for us, Gregg," he added placing a hand on the young man's shoulder, "that we have another strong back to depend on." . . .

As they talked evening closed in. From the alders on the hillside came the plaintive night-song of the golden-crown—the three notes of poignant beauty and mystery that were linked indissolubly with the summer twilights of Kon Klayu. Out over the reefs the sun had gone down splendidly into the sea. Broad ribbons of clear jade streaked the primrose of the sky. Beneath, bands of amethyst, amber and rose merged slowly into a flame of crimson, and while the violet dusk crept over the sea, the stars came out. Blowing across the bare brown reefs the night wind brought the scent of kelp and the muffled boom of surf.

The peace and promise of the sunset soothed all into silence for a time. Ellen and Jean and Lollie sitting close on the bottom step of the porch, watched in reverent wonder as the colors changed. At last the boy lifted his eyes to his mother's face.

"God smiles, mother," he said simply, resting his tired head against her shoulder.

Jean leaned across to her sister.

"Ellen," she said quietly, "I think I love best of all the evening-time of things, don't you—the fall of the year; the end of the day. I wonder—" a wistfulness crept into her voice—"I wonder . . . I hope . . . no, I know that when it comes, I'll find that the sunset time of life is the most beautiful!"

As she finished speaking she turned instinctively to look at the old man on the porch above her, the only one of them whose slowing feet had turned into the Sundown Trail. Kayak's hand, loosely holding his cooling pipe, rested on his knee. His sombrero backed his strong, bearded face, which had taken on the serenity of the evening. His deep eyes were calm with revery. As she gazed the girl's heart was flooded with a pitying tenderness for him, for Kayak Bill who, because of something buried deep in his past, faced the sunset of life—alone.

She turned her face away—and met the warm young eyes of Gregg Harlan bent upon her. . . . Then suddenly she was glowingly happy because she was still young.