"I--I guess I may as well tell you about it. It"s really no great mystery, no great story of the discovery of gold. Just the locating of a bit of whalebone.
"You see, my uncle came to the North with two thousand dollars. He stayed three years. Then the money was gone and he had found no gold.
That happens often, I"m told. Then, one day he came upon the carca.s.s of an immense bowhead whale far north on the Alaskan sh.o.r.e. It had been washed ash.o.r.e by a storm. No natives lived near. The bone of that whale was worth a small fortune. He cut it out and buried it in the sand dunes near the beach. So eager was he to make good at last that he actually lived on the gristly flesh of that whale until the work was done. Then he went south in search of a gasoline schooner to bring the treasure away. It was worth four or five thousand dollars.
But he had made himself sick. He was brought home from Nome delirious.
From his ravings his son, my cousin, gathered some notion of a treasure hid away in Alaska. The doctor said he would recover in time. His family was in need of money. I offered to come up here and find out what I could. His son was to write me any information he could obtain.
We had written one another letters in Greek while in college. We decided to do it in this case, addressing one another as Phi Beta Ki.
"Apparently my uncle had said too much in his delirium before he left Nome. This crooked old miner, our bearded friend, heard it, and later, somehow, got on my trail.
"You know the rest, except that this letter gives the location of the whalebone. In the spring I shall go after it."
As he finished, a great, glad feeling of content swept over Marian; she had been right, had made no mistake; the letter was really Phi"s. Now he had it and all was well.
The following day they succeeded in finding a competent guide to pilot them the remaining distance across the Straits, and in due time they arrived safely at the cabin which had been their home.
Lucile found a new teacher in her position, but for that she did not care, as she had already decided to spend a month with Marian in Nome, then take the overland trail home.
Marian"s sketches were received with great enthusiasm by the Society of Ethnology. Because of her extra efforts in securing the unusual pictures of the Reindeer Chukches, they added a thousand dollars to the agreed price.
Phi"s search for the buried treasure was successful, and to him was given the unselfish joy of seeing his uncle, now completely restored to health, comfortably set up in a snug little business of his own.