The older man looked at his nephew with unconcealed disgust.  He had no patience with levity from the lips of softness.

“Well, I’m going to take another one of those what-you-call masculine vacations.  Suppose I asked you to come along?”

“Rather belated, I must say.  Where is it?”

“Hal and Robert are going in to Klondike, and I’m going to see them across the Pass and down to the Lakes, then return—­”

He got no further, for the young man had sprung forward and gripped his hand.

“My preserver!”

John Bellew was immediately suspicious.  He had not dreamed the invitation would be accepted.

“You don’t mean it?” he said.

“When do we start?”

“It will be a hard trip.  You’ll be in the way.”

“No, I won’t.  I’ll work.  I’ve learned to work since I went on The Billow.”

“Each man has to take a year’s supplies in with him.  There’ll be such a jam the Indian packers won’t be able to handle it.  Hal and Robert will have to pack their outfits across themselves.  That’s what I’m going along for—­to help them pack.  If you come you’ll have to do the same.”

“Watch me.”

“You can’t pack,” was the objection.

“When do we start?”

“To-morrow.”

“You needn’t take it to yourself that your lecture on the hard has done it,” Kit said, at parting.  “I just had to get away, somewhere, anywhere, from O’Hara.”

“Who is O’Hara?  A Jap?”

“No; he’s an Irishman, and a slave-driver, and my best friend.  He’s the editor and proprietor and all-round big squeeze of The Billow.  What he says goes.  He can make ghosts walk.”

That night Kit Bellew wrote a note to O’Hara.  “It’s only a several weeks’ vacation,” he explained.  “You’ll have to get some gink to dope out instalments for that serial.  Sorry, old man, but my health demands it.  I’ll kick in twice as hard when I get back.”

Kit Bellew landed through the madness of the Dyea beach, congested with thousand-pound outfits of thousands of men.  This immense mass of luggage and food, flung ashore in mountains by the steamers, was beginning slowly to dribble up the Dyea Valley and across Chilkoot.  It was a portage of twenty-eight miles, and could be accomplished only on the backs of men.  Despite the fact that the Indian packers had jumped the freight from eight cents a pound to forty, they were swamped with the work, and it was plain that winter would catch the major portion of the outfits on the wrong side of the divide.

Tenderest of the tenderfeet was Kit.  Like many hundreds of others he carried a big revolver swung on a cartridge-belt.  Of this, his uncle, filled with memories of old lawless days, was likewise guilty.  But Kit Bellew was romantic.  He was fascinated by the froth and sparkle of the gold rush, and viewed its life and movement with an artist’s eye.  He did not take it seriously.  As he said on the steamer, it was not his funeral.  He was merely on a vacation, and intended to peep over the top of the pass for a “look see” and then to return.