Spring came.  The sun shot up out of the south.  The land exchanged its austere robes for the garb of a smiling wanton.  Everywhere light laughed and life invited.  The days stretched out their balmy length and the nights passed from blinks of darkness to no darkness at all.  The river bared its bosom, and snorting steamboats challenged the wilderness.  There were stir and bustle, new faces, and fresh facts.  An assistant arrived at Twenty Mile, and Sandy MacPherson wandered off with a bunch of prospectors to invade the Koyokuk country.  And there were newspapers and magazines and letters for Neil Bonner.  And Jees Uck looked on in worriment, for she knew his kindred talked with him across the world.

Without much shock, it came to him that his father was dead.  There was a sweet letter of forgiveness, dictated in his last hours.  There were official letters from the Company, graciously ordering him to turn the post over to the assistant and permitting him to depart at his earliest pleasure.  A long, legal affair from the lawyers informed him of interminable lists of stocks and bonds, real estate, rents, and chattels that were his by his father’s will.  And a dainty bit of stationery, sealed and monogramed, implored dear Neil’s return to his heart-broken and loving mother.

Neil Bonner did some swift thinking, and when the Yukon Belle coughed in to the bank on her way down to Bering Sea, he departed—­departed with the ancient lie of quick return young and blithe on his lips.

“I’ll come back, dear Jees Uck, before the first snow flies,” he promised her, between the last kisses at the gang-plank.

And not only did he promise, but, like the majority of men under the same circumstances, he really meant it.  To John Thompson, the new agent, he gave orders for the extension of unlimited credit to his wife, Jees Uck.  Also, with his last look from the deck of the Yukon Belle, he saw a dozen men at work rearing the logs that were to make the most comfortable house along a thousand miles of river front—­the house of Jees Uck, and likewise the house of Neil Bonner—­ere the first flurry of snow.  For he fully and fondly meant to come back.  Jees Uck was dear to him, and, further, a golden future awaited the north.  With his father’s money he intended to verify that future.  An ambitious dream allured him.  With his four years of experience, and aided by the friendly cooperation of the P. C. Company, he would return to become the Rhodes of Alaska.  And he would return, fast as steam could drive, as soon as he had put into shape the affairs of his father, whom he had never known, and comforted his mother, whom he had forgotten.

There was much ado when Neil Bonner came back from the Arctic.  The fires were lighted and the fleshpots slung, and he took of it all and called it good.  Not only was he bronzed and creased, but he was a new man under his skin, with a grip on things and a seriousness and control.  His old companions were amazed when he declined to hit up the pace in the good old way, while his father’s crony rubbed hands gleefully, and became an authority upon the reclamation of wayward and idle youth.