CHAPTER I THE WHITE CHIEF OF KATLEEAN It was quiet in the great store room of the Alaska Fur and Trading Company's post at Kat-lee-an. The westering sun streaming in through a side window lighted up shelves of brightly labeled canned goods and a long, scarred counter piled high with gay blankets and men's rough clothing. Back of the big, pot-bellied stove—cold now—that stood near the... more...

CHAPTER I PRESENTIMENT The man was short and fat, and greasy above the dark beard line. In addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now he moved with a limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue flannel shirt, open at the throat, exposed a broad hairy chest that rose and fell mightily with the effort he was making. And therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot—with the heat of a... more...

Fra Rafael saw strange things, impossible things. Then there was the mystery of the seven young virginal girls of Huascan.   Fra Rafael drew the llama-wool blanket closer about his narrow shoulders, shivering in the cold wind that screamed down from Huascan. His face held great pain. I rose, walked to the door of the hut and peered through fog at the shadowy haunted lands that lifted toward the... more...

CHAPTER I I HAVE A WARNING When it was all over Mr. Sam came out to the spring-house to say good-by to me before he and Mrs. Sam left. I hated to see him go, after all we had been through together, and I suppose he saw it in my face, for he came over close and stood looking down at me, and smiling. "You saved us, Minnie," he said, "and I needn't tell you we're grateful; but do you... more...

"If you called me here to tell me to have a child," Mary Pornsen said, "you can just forget about it. We girls have made up our minds." Hugh Farrel, Chief Medical Officer of the Exodus VII, sighed and leaned back in his chair. He looked at Mary's husband. "And you, Ralph," he said. "How do you feel?" Ralph Pornsen looked at Mary uncomfortably, started to speak and... more...

FOREWORD Once upon a time as four blind men sat by the roadside they heard the tramp of an elephant’s feet, and said one to another, “Here comes an elephant; now we shall know what he is like.” The first blind man put out his hand and touched the elephant’s broad side. The second took hold of a leg. The third grasped a tusk, and the fourth clutched the animal’s tail. “Now do you know what... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BOHEMIANS. Early one morning in the month of March, 1770, a woman bearing in her arms a new-born infant, was hastening along the left bank of the Garden, a small river that rises in the Cevennes, traverses the department of the Gard, and empties into the Rhone, not far from Beaucaire. It would be difficult to find more varied and picturesque scenery than that which borders this stream... more...

Whiffet, Skiffet and Skud were three little red squirrels who lived with their father and mother in a tiny brown house in the old chestnut tree. First, I must tell you how the Squirrel family came to live in this dear little house. You see it happened this way. Father and Mother Squirrel started out very early one morning in the spring, to hunt a new home as they did not feel safe any longer living... more...

AN IDYL OF THE ROAD   aroline rocked herself back and forth from her waist, defying the uncompromisingly straight chair which inclosed her portly little person. "Bounded 'n th' north by Mass'joosetts; bounded 'n th' north by Mass'joosetts; bounded 'n th' north by Mass'joosetts," she intoned in a monotonous chant. But her eyes were not upon the map;... more...

AN OLD MATE OF YOUR FATHER'S You remember when we hurried home from the old bush school how we were sometimes startled by a bearded apparition, who smiled kindly down on us, and whom our mother introduced, as we raked off our hats, as "An old mate of your father's on the diggings, Johnny." And he would pat our heads and say we were fine boys, or girls—as the case may have been—and... more...