Once in an agony of loneliness she sang these things aloud, but her
husband heard her, and his face turned gray and drawn, and her soul
told her she must not be heard again singing these things aloud.
And one evening a little steamer came into harbor. Many Indians
came ashore from it, as the fishing season had begun. Among others
was a young woman over whose face the finger of illness had traced
shadows and lines of suffering. In her arms she held a baby, a
beautiful, chubby, round-faced, healthy child that seemed too heavy
for her wasted form to support. She looked about her wistfully,
evidently seeking a face that was not there, and as the steamer
pulled out of the harbor, she sat down weakly on the wharf, laid
the child across her lap, and buried her face in her hands. Maarda
touched her shoulder.
"Who do you look for?" she asked.
"For my brother Luke 'Alaska,'" replied the woman. "I am ill, my
husband is dead, my brother will take care of me; he's a good man."
"Luke 'Alaska,'" said Maarda. What had she heard of Luke "Alaska?"
Why, of course, he was one of the men her own husband had taken a
hundred miles up the coast as axeman on a surveying party, but she
dared not tell this sick woman.
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