Part 8 (1/1)

”Did you know him, Neil?” queried Kitty

”Know him? Most intimately,” Neil answered, and harked back to dreary Twenty Mile and the hts

And here ht well end the story of Jees Uck but for the crown she put upon her renunciation When she returned to the North to dwell in her grand log-house, John Thompson found that the P C Company could make a shi+ft somehow to carry on its business without his aid Also, the new agent and the succeeding agents received instructions that the worub she desired, in whatsoever quantities she ordered, and that no charge should be placed upon the books Further, the Company paid yearly to the woman Jees Uck a pension of five thousand dollars

When he had attained suitable age, Father Cha when Jees Uck received letters regularly froe in Maryland Later on these letters came from Italy, and still later from France And in the end there returned to Alaska one Father Neil, a ood in the land, who loved his mother and who ultih authority in the order

Jees Uck was a young woman when she went back into the North, and ht, and no breath was ever raised save in coood sisters at Holy Cross, where she learned to read and write and becaery After that she returned to her grand log-house and gathered about her the young girls of the Toyaat village, to show them the way of their feet in the world It is neither Protestant nor Catholic, this school in the house built by Neil Bonner for Jees Uck, his wife; but the missionaries of all the sects look upon it with equal favour The latchstring is always out, and tired prospectors and trail-wearyriver or frozen trail to rest there for a space and be warm by her fire And, down in the States, Kitty Bonner is pleased at the interest her husband takes in Alaskan education and the large suh she often smiles and chaffs, deep down and secretly she is but the prouder of him