The Challenge of the North | Page 3

had earned a definite place. After graduating from the local high
school he had entered the employ of McNabb, and within a very few
years had been promoted to head his department. At the Country Club
he could be depended upon to qualify with the first flight in the annual
golf tournament, and the "dope" was all upset when he did not play in
the finals on the courts. He lived at the city's only "family hotel," drove
his own modest car, and religiously spent his Sundays on the trout
streams.
Hedin picked up the coat and reverently deposited it in the fur safe. "It's
a coat fit for a queen," he decided as he closed and locked the door.
And Jean was the one woman in the world to wear it. Jean with the red
blood coursing through her veins, her glow of health, and the sparkle of
her eyes--McNabb's own daughter. "And, yet, I can't suggest it

because--" Hedin muttered aloud and scowled at the floor. "I'd have
asked her before this," he went on, "if that Wentworth hadn't butted in.
Who knows anything about him, anyway? I'll ask her this afternoon."
He stopped abruptly and smiled into the eyes of the girl who was
hurrying toward him down the aisle.
"Oh, Oskar, I've just got a minute. I stopped in to remind you that this
is Saturday, and we're going tobogganing this afternoon, and I've asked
Mr. Wentworth and some of the crowd, and there'll be four or five
toboggans, and it will be no end jolly. And this is my birthday, and
you're a dear to think of it and send me all those flowers, and I'm going
to wear 'em to-night. Listen, Elsie Campbell is giving a dinner for me
this evening and of course you're not invited because it's just too funny
the way she has snubbed you lately, and there's a show in town and
after dinner we're going. Of course it won't be any good, but she's
making a theatre party of it, and it sounds grand anyway. And I must
hurry along now because I must remind Dad that he promised me a fur
coat the day I was twenty-one, and I'll be back after a while and you
can help me pick it out. Good-by, see you later!" And she was gone,
leaving Hedin gazing after her with a smile as he strove to digest the
jumble of uncorrelated information of which she had unburdened
herself. "Wentworth, and some of the crowd! Oh, it will be jolly, all
right--damn Wentworth!"
Old John McNabb looked up from his papers as his daughter burst into
his private office and, rushing to his side, planted a kiss squarely upon
the top of his bald head. "I came in to tell you I'm twenty-one to-day,"
she announced.
"Well, well, so ye are! Ye come into the world on the first of March,
true to the old sayin', an' ye've be'n boisterous ever since. Twenty-one
years old, an' tell me now, what have ye ever accomplished? When I
was your age I'd be'n livin' in the bush north of 60 for two years, an'
could do my fifty miles on snowshoes an' carry a pack."
"Maybe I can't do fifty miles a day on snowshoes, and I'm sure it isn't
my fault I don't live north of 60. But I'm in a hurry; I promised to help
Mr. Wentworth pick out a toboggan cap. I stopped in to remind you

that you promised me a fur coat on my twenty-first birthday."
The old man regarded her thoughtfully. "So I did, so I did," he repeated
absently. "This Wentworth, now--he's been kickin' around an
uncommon lot, lately. Tell me again, who is he? What does he do for a
livin'?"
"Why, he's a civil engineer--hydraulic work is his specialty. He has
been employed by some company that intended to put in a power plant
of some kind on Nettle River, and either the company broke up, or they
found the plan was not feasible, or something, and they abandoned it.
So Mr. Wentworth isn't doing anything, at present. But he is a fine
fellow--so jolly, and so good looking, and he has a wonderful war
record. He was with the engineers in Russia."
"U-m-m, where d'ye get hold of his war record?"
"Why--why--he--he has told us about the things they did--his
company."
"Um--hum," Old John was stroking his nose.
"But, if he's civil engineer, an' out of a job, you might tell him to stop in
a minute--after he gets the right color of a toboggan cap picked out."

III
When the door closed behind the girl old John readjusted his nose
glasses and leaned back in his chair. "A clever engineer he is, beyond a
doubt,"