“Alaska too? Is it lost in Alaska too?”

He stared at her. His great arm gathered her to him, he held her close. “I was thinking aloud, Christine. Well, Alaska. Yes, Alaska still has the élan vital, perhaps it isn’t only because of climate and struggle, perhaps it isn’t even because we’ve always been so remote from the rest of the world. It may be that the pioneer stock is still running strong in our veins, first and second generation still. Even the new ones, the late-comers, who leave their homes for money or freedom or adventure, like all pioneers. It takes a vital drive to do that, and that doesn’t wear out for a few generations. Perhaps someday soon there’ll be thousands of miles of roads in Alaska, as there are in the states of the United States. Or the sky will be humming with planes all the way from Ketchikan clear up to Point Barrow. But in Alaska now we’re still far away from the rest of the world.”

“Grampa Czar says we aren’t. He says pretty soon no place will be far away from any place. He says Russia is right up there”—excitedly she pointed in the direction that might be north—“he says any minute look out bingo!”

He took her small hand in his great one, the steady blue eyes looked down into her glowing black ones.

“Don’t you worry about that, never mind about all that, little Christine. What were we saying before?”

“History. I’m history, you said.”

“Oh, yes. Well, that’s important just now. Being history. There are even men alive today who can remember when this land was Russian land, before it became part of the United States. One old man even claims he was there when it happened. He lives in the Old Pioneers’ Home in Sitka now. Of course there’s no record to prove it. He was bora in Sitka, it was called New Archangel then, it was the capital of Russian America.”

“I know that,” she interrupted, pertly. “That’s in our history book about Alaska, but that’s long ago.”

“Not so long, if a man remembers it. I don’t say that I believe him, but it could be true. He was just a boy.”

“Why don’t you believe him?”

“That was—let’s see—the date was 1867—about eighty years ago, the old fellow’s almost a hundred—well, it could be, certainly. But maybe he just read about it, or heard someone tell of it. It was very dramatic, the day they took down the Russian flag and ran up the American flag. But no very old man would be likely to remember it the way he tells it. I’ve heard him.”

“How does he tell it?”

“He says he remembers the soldiers lined up in the Russian settlement. The United States had bought all of Alaska for seven million dollars. Imagine that!” But at the look of incomprehension on her face he interrupted himself contritely. “That doesn’t mean much to a little girl. But it’s interesting to know that most of the people of the United States were very angry at a man named Seward because he was the man who advised them to buy it. And now we know he was right, it’s worth a hundred times that, and more. So that wasn’t such a bad bargain, was it?”