Free The Trail of 98 by Robert W Service

honourable, you're sincere. I could see it in
your face, in your eyes. I knew I could trust you. You've been kindness itself
to grandfather and I, and I never can thank you enough."
    "Nonsense! Don't talk of thanks, Berna. You don't know what a happiness it's
been to help you. I'm sorry I've done so little. Oh, I'm going to be sincere and
frank with you. The few hours I've had with you have made me long for others.
I'm a lonely beggar. I never had a sister, never a girl friend. You're the
first, and it's been like sudden sunshine to me. Now, can't I be really and
truly your friend, Berna; your friend that would do much for you? Let me do
something, anything, to show how earnestly I mean it?"
    "Yes, I know. Well, then, you are my dear, true friendthere, now."
    "Yes,but, Berna! To-morrow you'll go and we'll likely never see each other
again. What's the good of it all?"
    "Well, what do you want? We will both have a memory, a very sweet, nice
memory, won't we? Believe me, it's better so. You don't want to haveanything to do with a girl
like me. You don't know anything about me, and you see the kind of people I'm
going with. Perhaps I am just as bad as they."
    "Don't say that, Berna," I interposed sternly; "you're all that's good and
pure and sweet."
    "No, I'm not, either. We're all of us pretty mixed. But I'm not so bad, and
it's nice of you to think those things.... Oh! if I had never come on this
terrible trip! I don't even know where we are going, and I'm afraid,
afraid."
    "No, little girl."
    "Yes, I can't tell you how afraid I am. The country's so savage and lonely;
the men are so like brute beasts; the womenwell, they're worse. And here are we
in the midst of it. I don't know what's going to become of us."
    "Well, Berna, if it's like that, why don't you and your grandfather turn
back? Why go on?"
    "He will never turn back. He'll go on till he dies. He only knows one word of
English and that's Klondike, Klondike. He mutters it a thousand times a day. He
has visions of gold, glittering heaps of it, and he'll stagger and struggle on
till he finds it."
    "But can't you reason with him?"
    "Oh, it's all no use. He's had a dream. He's like a man that's crazy. He
thinks he has been chosen, and that to him will a great treasure be revealed.
You might as well reason with a stone. All I can do is to follow him, is to take
care of him."
    "What about the
Winklesteins, Berna?"
    "Oh, they're at the bottom of it all. It is they who have inflamed his mind.
He has a little money, the savings of a lifetime, about two thousand dollars;
and ever since he came to this country, they've been trying to get it. They ran
a little restaurant in New York. They tried to get him to put his little store
in that. Now they are using the gold as a bait, and luring him up here. They'll
rob and kill him in the end, and the cruel part ishe's not greedy, he doesn't
want it for himselfbut for me. That's what breaks my heart."
    "Surely you're mistaken, Berna; they can't be so bad as that."
    "Bad! I tell you they're vile . The man's a worm, and the woman, she's
a devil incarnate. She's so strong and so violent in her tempers that when she
gets drinkingwell, it's just awful. I should know it, I lived with them for
three years."
    "Where?"
    "In New York. I came from the old country to them. They worked me in the
restaurant at first. Then, after a bit, I got employment in a shirt-waist
factory. I was quick and handy, and I worked early and late. I attended a night
school. I read till my eyes ached. They said I was clever. The teacher wanted me
to train and be a teacher too. But what was the good of thinking of it? I had my
living to get, so I stayed at the factory and worked and worked. Then when I had
saved a few dollars, I sent for grandfather, and he came and welived in the tenement and were very
happy for a while. But the Winklesteins never gave us any peace. They knew he
had a little money laid away, and they itched to get