The Alaskan by James Oliver Curwood — Read

That night, in Olaf's cabin, Alan put himself back on the old track again. He made no effort to minimize the tragedy that had come into his life, and he knew its effect upon him would never be wiped away, and that Mary Standish would always live in his thoughts, no matter what happened in the years to come. But he was not the sort to let any part of himself wither up and die because of a blow that had darkened his mental visions of things. His plans lay ahead of him, his old ambitions and his dreams of achievement. They seemed pulseless and dead now, but he knew it was because his own fire had temporarily burned out. And he realized the vital necessity of building it up again. So he first wrote a letter to Ellen McCormick, and in this placed a second letter-carefully sealed-which was not to be opened unless they found Mary Standish, and which contained something he had found impossible to put into words in Sandy's cabin. It was trivial and embarrassing when spoken to others, but it meant a great deal to him. Then he made the final arrangements for Olaf to carry him to Seward in the _Norden_, for Captain Rifle's ship was well on her way to Unalaska. Thought of Captain Rifle urged him to write another letter in which he told briefly the disappointing details of his search.

He was rather surprised the next morning to find he had entirely forgotten Rossland. While he was attending to his affairs at the bank, Olaf secured information that Rossland was resting comfortably in the hospital and had not one chance in ten of dying. It was not Alan's intention to see him. He wanted to hear nothing he might have to say about Mary Standish. To associate them in any way, as he thought of her now, was little short of sacrilege. He was conscious of the change in himself, for it was rather an amazing upsetting of the original Alan Holt. That person would have gone to Rossland with the deliberate and businesslike intention of sifting the matter to the bottom that he might disprove his own responsibility and set himself right in his own eyes. In self-defense he would have given Rossland an opportunity to break down with cold facts the disturbing something which his mind had unconsciously built up. But the new Alan revolted. He wanted to carry the thing away with him, he wanted it to live, and so it went with him, uncontaminated by any truths or lies which Rossland might have told him.