On his desk were two pictures in copper-colored frames, one of George Washington and the other of Abraham Lincoln, and behind them crisscrossed against the wall just over the top of the desk, were four tiny American flags.

They recalled Alan's mind to the evening aboard the _Nome_ when Mary Standish had challenged his assertion that he was an Alaskan and not an American.
Only she would have thought of those two pictures and the little flags.
There were flowers in his room, and she had placed them there.

She must have picked fresh flowers each day and kept them waiting the hour of his coming, and she had thought of him in Tanana, where she had purchased the cloth for the curtains and the covers.

He went into his bedroom and found new curtains at the window, a new coverlet on his bed, and a pair of red morocco slippers that he had never seen before.

He took them up in his hands and laughed when he saw how she had misjudged the size of his feet.
In the living-room he sat down and lighted his pipe, observing that Keok's phonograph, which had been there earlier in the evening, was gone.