By the middle of June, John, the lawyer, was sweltering at drill in Camp Libre in Florida; and Harrison, who cared for nothing in the world but Isabelle and music, was sweltering before Fort Malati, doing outpost duty.

They came home in the summer of ’99. Harrison, who had been in much action, came home fairly well; John, who had done only camp and guard duty, came pale, emaciated and weak from typhoid contracted in Cuba. Harrison and Isabelle made plans to move immediately to Chicago. Abbie thought she could not stand it,—to have Isabelle live so far away. Why did children do that? It made her envy Christine, whose children were all settling down on the various eighties that Gus had bought,—Heinie here, Emil there, even Fritz, just home from the Philippines, had married and started into the field.

Isabelle took the piano. “I hate to, Mother, with Grace eleven now. It seems selfish.”

“No, you take it,” Abbie told her. “Grace can’t bear to practice. She just reads and reads. My,—how different you children all are.”

And then it came about that Chicago seemed not far, almost neighborly, in comparison with John’s new location. After recuperating at home that summer, John left for Seattle and Nome. Abbie was stunned. Nome,—in Alaska,—from which there could be no return in the fall after the ice had frozen, from which there could come no word until late spring when the ice had gone out. In his characteristic way, John had told his plan casually only a few days before he left. There was a future in Alaska. It was the place for young fellows. Fortunes awaited their picking up. He would open a law office in Nome and keep his eyes open for anything presenting itself on the side. He was using his army money for the purpose. How queer, thought Abbie,—just as Will had taken his army money for the long-ago trip into Nebraska. Soldiers of fortune, both.

Calm and dry-eyed, Abbie told her son good-by. But all winter, day and night, her thoughts were with him. Every night when she was ready for bed she would look over the snow-covered prairie to the northwest, toward the land to which no word could go,—toward the land from which no word could come.

It was June before the first of the winter letters came. There were many. John had written her often. Many nights, then, as she had stood looking across the snow-wrapped prairie, John had been writing to her. After all, no distance could sever the tie that bound them,—nothing come between her and her silent boy. The letters were of an intense interest to home-keeping Abbie,—descriptive of the gold rush. Most important of all, John had been appointed U. S. Commissioner and was going up above the Arctic Circle.

In the late fall of that year, when Mack’s and Emma’s boy, Stanley, was six, a second son was born to them. They named him Donald. And he immediately upset Abbie’s plans for Christmas by acquiring colic to such a noisy degree that the Mackenzie Deal family decided to stay in Omaha behind closed doors with their vociferous offspring.