placed it with the envelope of diamonds in his inner pocket and hurried
from the mine.

Darkness again found him musing over a seal oil lamp. He was not in a
very happy mood. He was weary of orientalism and mystery. He longed for
the quiet of his little old town, Chicago. Wouldn't it be great to put
his feet under his old job and say, "Well, Boss, what's the dope
to-day?" Wouldn't it, though? And to go home at night to doll up in his
glad rags and call on Mazie. Oh, boy! It fairly made him sick to think
of it.

But, at last, his mind wandered back to the many mysteries which had
been straightened out not one bit by these events of the day. Here he
was traveling with two companions, a Jap girl and an Eskimo. Eskimo?
Right there he began to wonder if Iyok-ok, as he called himself, was
really an Eskimo after all. What if he should turn out to be a Jap
playing the part of an Eskimo? Only that day Johnny had once more come
upon him suddenly to find him in earnest conversation with the Jap girl.
And the language they had been using had sounded distinctly oriental.
And yet, if he was a Jap, how did it come about that he spoke the Eskimo
language so well?

Dismissing this question, his mind dwelt upon the events of the past few
days. Twice he had been begged not to kill the Russian. This last time
he most decidedly would have been justified in putting a bullet into the
rascal's brain. He had been prevented from doing so by Iyok-ok. Why?

"Anyway," he said to himself, yawning, "I'm glad I didn't do it. It's
nasty business, this killing people. I couldn't very well tell such a
thing to Mazie; you can't tell such things to a woman, and I want to