There was no proof that Czar had had anything to do with all this. But the disgruntled joker decided for himself. Two or three friends were told of his little plan—just enough to carry it through. Sober, they never would have started it. Once started, it carried itself to the finish. When, terrified by their own success, they tried to stop it, it was too late.

They placed an advertisement in the Seattle Post.

PICTURE BRIDE

Will exchange letters and photos with young respectable single lady of good appearance who can stand up to adventure and maybe roughing it in Alaska with young gentleman of steady habits who wants a lifetime partner to share his poke of gold. No shady characters or fly-by-nights need apply. Object matrimony. Send photo. Life in Alaska healthy and has got a fine future. Address: P.O. Box 19, Baranof, Alaska.

They had a dozen replies, but they decided on Bridie’s because hers was the briefest, the plainest. Her letter was literate enough, but there was about it a simplicity that the jokers mistook for ignorance.

She had been six months now in the United States; the vast overpowering size of it had filled her with pangs of loneliness and even fright, courageous as she was by nature. More in a spirit of fun and adventure than any serious intention she had answered the advertisement. There had come back by the return boat a photograph of the unknown Box 19. Czar Thor, it said his name was. Queer enough name, Bridie thought. But the photograph banished any criticism of the name. The handsome, almost spiritual, face; the magnificent eyes, the wavy hair, won the girl’s heart. This was romance. This was the Ameriky she had dreamed of when she had carried the heavy-laden trays in noisome hospital corridors.

She sent her photograph then, and a second letter. Looking at her picture—the honest eyes gazing straight out at you from the decent purposeful face—and reading her simple, self-reliant letter—the pranksters found the situation less hilarious than they had expected. They had meant to show the picture, the advertisement, and the letters to Czar just to kid him a little in the presence of the boys and girls if they could catch him, some evening, at the Rocker or the Poke. But it didn’t seem so funny now, and anyway Czar had gone on one of his sudden trips Outside. Bridie’s last letter created panic. She was coming. By the time this letter was received she would have left.

In a handwriting that was dashing in a childlike way, she stated her facts. “… from Ireland to the hospital in Lancashire, and there I got my training and then to America and my cousin in this Seattle.… I thought I never would see the end of the way, days it was to cross this big land … job in the hospital here in Seattle but the training is different to what we get in the old country … this Alaska you hear nothing else these days only Alaska, it sounds a fine big place and I was always one for adventuring and new sights.…”