TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 75 



The blue fox pelts vary, naturally, in quality, and 

 as much as fifty dollars is paid for a really excellent 

 skin. 



Anchoring at last in a land-locked cove we found 

 ourselves on the shores of a fox ranche, set on an 

 infinitesimal island, and proceeded to go ashore to say 

 "Salaam." 



We made our way between scanty bushes to a little 

 shack, with a stove pipe through the roof for chimney, 

 and a heterogeneous collection of empty coal-oil cans 

 doing duty for buckets beside the door. On a clothes 

 line slung from the house to a pole a pair of dainty 

 clocked stockings waved in the breeze. 



Clocked stockings on a fox ranche ! 



Instantly w r e longed to quest for the Golden Girl 

 who sometimes wore them. What would she be like? 

 It was a burning question of unbridled curiosity. In 

 the distance, coming from a group of ill-built sheds, 

 we heard some one singing. 'Twas like the trills of 

 a nightingale. The singer came nearer, the owner, 

 it must be, of the clocked stockings. Well, she was 

 like her foot-gear, dainty, charming, quite young. 

 A French Canadian, as pretty as they make them. 

 Here she had lived for two years, winter and summer, 

 caring for the foxes, helping her partner to bear the 

 lonely lot of a fox rancher in the Northern wilds. 

 There was some deep-set mystery about this couple, 

 which we, of course, did not seek to probe. They 

 were not the type of people to be where they were, to 

 work as they were working, and thereon, I suspect, 

 hangs a tale. The owner of the fox ranche was a 



