Some important issues had kept us apart. We've never heard from him since, and we have no idea what has become of him."

"Well," replied Snubbin, "I have just received word of his death, in a letter dated February 25."

Although all contact between Josias Lacoste and his family had long since ended, this information had a profound effect on Summy Skim. Since he and his cousin had lost both their parents and since each was an only child, they had no immediate family but each other, and their firm friendship made this relationship all the closer. He lowered his head and his eyes filled with tears as he realized that, of the entire family, only he and Ben Raddle were left. They had, of course, made several attempts to find out what had become of their uncle, and they regretted the fact that he had broken off all contact with them. Perhaps they were even hoping they might meet again some time, and now death had shattered that hope.

Besides, Josias Lacoste had always been rather uncommunicative by nature, and of a very adventurous temperament. It was now some twenty years since he had left Canada to make his fortune in the world. He was unmarried and had a small inheritance, which he had hoped to build up through speculation. Had that hope been fulfilled? Was it not more likely, with his well-known penchant for taking enormous risks, that he had been ruined? Would his nephews, his only heirs, receive a few scraps from his inheritance? It is only fair to say that Summy Skim and Ben Raddle had never thought about that, and with his passing, it seemed unlikely that they would think about it now in their grief at the loss of their last relative.

Snubbin left his client to his thoughts and waited to be asked a few questions, which he was prepared to answer. He was well aware of this family's situation and of the fine reputation they enjoyed in Montreal. He knew that, with the death of Josias Lacoste, Summy Skim and Ben Raddle were the last remaining members of the family. And since the governor of the Klondike had notified him of the death of the prospector who owned Claim 129 on the Fortymile River,' he had invited the two cousins to come to his office and find out what rights they had inherited from the deceased.

"Mr. Snubbin," asked Skim, "was it on the seventeenth of February that our uncle died?"

"The seventeenth of February, Mr. Skim."

"That's twenty-nine days ago now."

"Twenty-nine, yes. That's how long it took the news to reach me."

"Was our uncle off somewhere in Europe, then, in some distant land?" continued Skim, convinced that Josias Lacoste had never set foot in North America since he left.

"Oh no," replied the notary, holding out a letter hearing Canadian stamps.

"So," said Skim, "he was in Canada and we didn't know about it?"

"Yes, in Canada. But in the most remote part of the Dominion, near the border between our country and the American territory of Alaska. It's a region with which communication is slow and difficult."

"You're referring to the Klondike, I presume, Mr. Snubbin."

"Yes, the Klondike, where your uncle went to live about ten months ago."

"Ten months," repeated Skim, "and it didn't even occur to him as he was crossing the continent on his way to that mining region to come to Montreal and shake hands with his nephews. It would have been our last opportunity to see him!"

Summy Skim was deeply affected by that thought.

"What would you expect?" replied the notary. "Mr. Lacoste was probably in a hurry to get to the Klondike, like so many thousands of otherssick people, I call them, infected with that gold fever that has claimed so many victims and will continue to claim many more! The new placers have been invaded from every corner of the world. After Australia, there was California, after California, the Transvaal, after the Transvaal, the Klondike, and after the Klondike there will be other gold-bearing regions, and so it will go on until Judgment Day-I mean until the last deposit has been exhausted."

Then Snubbin revealed the information contained in the governor's letter. It was, in fact, early in 1897 when Josias Lacoste had set foot in Dawson City, the capital of the Klondike,' armed with the obligatory prospecting equipment. Since July of 1896, when gold had been discovered in Gold Bottom Creek, a tributary of Hunker Creek,' the Klondike region had been attracting attention. The following year Lacoste came to the gold fields, to which so many miners were already streaming. He wanted to use the little money he had left to buy a claim, never doubting that he would make a fortune. After doing his research, he purchased Claim 129, located on the Fortymile River, a tributary of the Yukon, the great Canadian-Alaskan waterway.

"It seems," Snubbin continued, "that this claim had not yet produced as much profit as Mr. Lacoste expected. However, it did not appear to be exhausted, and perhaps your uncle might have had as much success with it as he hoped. But there are so many dangers threatening the unfortunate immigrants in that far-off region,' the terrible winter cold, diseases of epidemic proportions, the privations to which so many unfortunates succumb! So many of them come back poorer than when they left!"

"Could it have been these privations that killed our uncle?" asked Summy Skim.

"No," replied the notary, "the letter does not indicate that he was reduced to that extremity.