As the mad riot swept past him and out of doors, he signalled to the slaves, and the four tottering old men supported him on his feet as he met the returning revellers, upright, glass in hand, pledging them a toast to the short night when a man sleeps warm.

It did not take long to settle the estate of Klakee-Nah.  Tommy, the little Englishman, clerk at the trading post, was called in by El-Soo to help.  There was nothing but debts, notes overdue, mortgaged properties, and properties mortgaged but worthless.  Notes and mortgages were held by Porportuk.  Tommy called him a robber many times as he pondered the compounding of the interest.

“Is it a debt, Tommy?” El-Soo asked.

“It is a robbery,” Tommy answered.

“Nevertheless, it is a debt,” she persisted.

The winter wore away, and the early spring, and still the claims of Porportuk remained unpaid.  He saw El-Soo often and explained to her at length, as he had explained to her father, the way the debt could be cancelled.  Also, he brought with him old medicine-men, who elaborated to her the everlasting damnation of her father if the debt were not paid.  One day, after such an elaboration, El-Soo made final announcement to Porportuk.

“I shall tell you two things,” she said.  “First I shall not be your wife.  Will you remember that?  Second, you shall be paid the last cent of the sixteen thousand dollars—­”

“Fifteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents,” Porportuk corrected.

“My father said sixteen thousand,” was her reply.  “You shall be paid.”

“How?”

“I know not how, but I shall find out how.  Now go, and bother me no more.  If you do”—­she hesitated to find fitting penalty—­“if you do, I shall have you rolled in the snow again as soon as the first snow flies.”

This was still in the early spring, and a little later El-Soo surprised the country.  Word went up and down the Yukon from Chilcoot to the Delta, and was carried from camp to camp to the farthermost camps, that in June, when the first salmon ran, El-Soo, daughter of Klakee-Nah, would sell herself at public auction to satisfy the claims of Porportuk.  Vain were the attempts to dissuade her.  The missionary at St. George wrestled with her, but she replied—­

“Only the debts to God are settled in the next world.  The debts of men are of this world, and in this world are they settled.”

Akoon wrestled with her, but she replied, “I do love thee, Akoon; but honour is greater than love, and who am I that I should blacken my father?” Sister Alberta journeyed all the way up from Holy Cross on the first steamer, and to no better end.

“My father wanders in the thick and endless forests,” said El-Soo.  “And there will he wander, with the lost souls crying, till the debt be paid.  Then, and not until then, may he go on to the house of the Great Father.”