Scrooge sat in an overstuffed chair, wrapped in a thick robe, trying to find some reason to be happy for the holidays. Why did Christmas always seem worse than the other times of the year? He was just as alone now as he had been on, say, June tenth. But something in the air made this time of year worse.

He reached over and took a snow globe from the end table with a shaky hand, and watched the tiny bits of white whirl around. He was drawn into the hypnotic dance of the white specks, and in his mind he was back at White Agony Creek with her. Oh, how he missed her. That month…such a short time, in the span of his life, but yet…in some ways it contained the best moments of all.

He could see it all as clearly as if he was standing there, in the snow, outside the cabin he built himself. He was digging with a pick, and Goldie had a shovel. They were trying to make the permafrost yield even more ore, but the falling snow covered any holes they dug as quickly as they dug them. A snowball thumped against his back, and he turned with a grin to see Goldie smirking at him. He dropped his pick and answered with another snowball. After a few more salvos, he called a truce and took her in his arms, his frozen bill touching hers for a tender kiss. She whispered a suggestion, and they headed back to the cabin to thaw each other out.

The Scrooge of 1947 blinked away the memories, allowing the snow globe in his hand to settle into stillness. "Goldie…" he murmured.

Why hadn’t he swallowed his pride and done this years before? Scrooge smiled, an expression long absent from his face. For the first time, the halls of his mansion echoed with the laughter of children as Huey, Dewey and Louie tried out their new roller skates. Donald was asleep in front of the fireplace, peanut shells scattered across his chest.

Scrooge sat back and closed his eyes, soaking in the long-missing warmth of a family. He should have invited his nephews over years ago. He hadn’t felt this young in ages! Nothing like a hearty meal, the presence of loved ones, a dip in the money bin, and giving a sound thrashing to the Beagle Boys to make one feel chipper.

He sipped some nutmeg tea and turned to look as Huey, Dewey and Louie skated into the room and crashed into a pile on Donald’s new bear rug.

"Oof!" one of the boys exclaimed, trying to untangle himself from his two brothers. Scrooge still hadn’t figured out a way to tell the three apart. How Donald managed was a mystery.

"Sorry, Unca Scrooge," said one of the others. "We haven’t quite gotten the hang of stopping yet."

"This thing is soft!" said the third, stretching out on the bear rug as if making a snow angel.

"Say, Unca Scrooge, will you tell us a story about the Wild West?" The one in the blue cap had been especially impressed by the way Scrooge lassoed Beagle Boys.

"Or the Yukon!"

"Tell us about Wild Bill Hickok and Geronimo and the James Gang and Annie Oakley and Butch Cassidy!" The one in the green shirt got so excited he lost his balance on his roller skates and plopped down on his tail.

"Well, I suppose there’s time for a yarn or two before you have to go," Scrooge said, glancing at the grandfather clock by the door.

"Yahoo!" the boys cheered, flopping down on the bear rug to listen. Donald woke up long enough to finish off his glass of lemonade and a handful of peanuts, then dozed off again.

"All right, boys. It was back in 1882…I was in Montana…"

The triplet ducklings sat riveted to the spot, hanging on his every word. Scrooge grinned in spite of himself. Finally, an appreciative audience! A family. This was what had been missing from his life. It was the best Christmas he could remember…

Spring was melting away to summer, and Scrooge McDuck finally had his office in order again. He realized that, among the many mistakes he had made in his life, retiring was one of them. He had done nothing but mope about and feel sorry for himself since retiring, and he was sick and tired of it. Age didn’t matter. He was going to keep on doing what he loved for as long as he could, and that was final.

There was just one little problem.

"I just finished counting all this money, and I now I can’t remember how much there was!" he wailed. A flurry of papers shot into the air as he rummaged around on his desk. "I wrote the total on a slip of paper, but I’ve forgotten where I put the slip! Or did I write it down? I’ve forgotten whether I did, or I didn’t!" He dashed for the phone. "I’ll have to get my nephew over here to help me count it again. I may not live long enough to finish the job alone!" He picked up the phone, his finger poised over the dial. "Let me see now… What’s my nephew’s name? I’ve forgotten!"

A familiar voice came from behind him. "Donald Duck!"

"That’s right! Say, maybe you remember his phone number, too!"

"I sure do. But why phone? I’m him!"

Scrooge froze, put down the phone, and studied the other duck closely. "So you are! Say, that’s right! You are Donald Duck!" He held his head in disgust. "How absent-minded can I get?" Suddenly, he spun with an angry look. "Uh…how did you get in here—into my private office!"

"Walked in," Donald said with a shrug. "The door was unlocked."

"Unlocked!" He dashed to the door with a key. "Great heavens to Betsy! Something’s got to be done about my memory! I leave the door unlocked, with three cubic acres of money just waiting to be stolen!"

"You ought to see a doctor! Maybe there’s a screw loose in your head!"

Scrooge scowled. "Not that loose! Doctors cost money!"

"Okay, okay, save the two dollars doctor’s fee, and lose your whole fortune to thieves. You wouldn’t have to count it again," Donald said in disgust.

A light bulb went on in Scrooge’s head. "I’ll tie a string around my finger! That’ll remind me not to forget!" He turned around, and was about to scold Donald for sitting in his chair with his feet on the desk. Then he noticed a long string dangling in the air above the desk. "This string here…what’s it doing hanging down from the ceiling?"

He yanked the string, and a gigantic boxing glove crashed out of the ceiling to mash him flat. "I forgot! That string was the tripper for my burglar batterer!" Donald helped him up off the floor. "I guess you’re right," she said with a sigh, heading for the coat rack to retrieve his hat and cane. "I do need to see a doctor!"

The doctor diagnosed Scrooge with "blinkus of the thinkus," a mild form of amnesia, likely brought on by the stress of coming out of retirement. He prescribed some pills, gave him one dose to start with, and sent him on his way. The effect was immediate. As he and Donald walked back to the money bin (to save taxi fare), his memory not only returned to normal, but was sharpened beyond its usual facility. Childhood incidents came rushing back, as well as nuances of his adventures that he had forgotten years ago. But towering above all those incidents was the highlight of his entire life to date: the Yukon Gold Rush. The details of his years in the Klondike returned with almost painful clarity. And, at the center of it all, she stood, singing to him across the years.

"Goldie! Skagway…Dawson…" he began under his breath.

"Huh? What’s that you’re mumbling?" Donald asked, his voice sounding hollow and distant to his uncle.

"Glittering Goldie…White Agony Creek…four rocks in a square…"

"I said, what was that you said?" Donald pried again.

"At least five hundred pounds of pure nuggets!"

"Wake up! I’m talking to you!"

"Leave me be! I’m remembering!" he snapped. Donald trailed along behind him, looking confused. "The old Blackjack Ballroom…the trail to Whitehorse… mosquitos…mud…ice…the Goose Egg Nugget…" It was all so clear in his mind! He whirled to face his nephew. "How soon can you and the kids be ready for a long trip?"

"Why, uh—" Donald stammered.

"I need you! Be packed and waiting at the Alaska pier in twenty minutes!"

"But—"

"Get goin!" Scrooge yelled, shooing Donald on his way with a threatening wave of his cane.

Scrooge stood at the pier with a single suitcase, practically glowing with excitement. After all these years, he was on the move again. Traveling: the thing he loved almost as much as money. He inhaled the sea air, invigorated by the prospect of chasing the horizon again.

He heard Donald’s voice and turned to look as the boys ran toward him. Late, as always. "Don’t ask me where we’re going or why! This is Uncle Scrooge’s party!" he was saying.

"You bet it’s my party!" Scrooge interrupted. "You’re going with me…back to the Klondike!"

Donald had apparently already learned not to argue with his uncle, so he and his three nephews followed Scrooge on board a steam liner. As the ship moved out of the harbor, the ducks gathered at the railing to hear the explanation.

"The doc’s medicine worked so well that I suddenly remembered things I’d forgotten fifty years ago! Mostly I remember a rich strike I made when I was a sourdough in the Yukon gold rush! I buried a hoard of nuggets at my claim on White Agony Creek, then walked away and forgot it!" He turned and walked to the opposite railing. "Now I remember the nuggets, and more…much more! I remember a girl…" he said with a sigh.

"A girl?" echoed the boys.

"Glittering Goldie, the Star of the North," he said with a distant look, remembering her song ringing out in the clear Klondike air.

"Golly!" Donald said.

She leaned on the railing and gave a sidelong look at the sunset. "She was spangled and flashy and her heart was as hard as the ice on the tundra… The only live one I ever knew!"

"Well, this is something! We never knew you had a girl!"

"What became of her, Uncle Scrooge?" Donald asked.

Scrooge gazed at the sunset wistfully. "Who knows? Fifty years is a long time!"

"Was she your sweetheart, Uncle Scrooge?" asked the boys, each triplet speaking part of the sentence in that way that always unnerved him.

"Bah!" he snorted, turning his back on the radiant sunset.

"Oh, no?" Donald teased. "Then why do you get that faraway look in your eyes whenever you think about her?"

Scrooge sneered at his nephew. "That faraway look is my figuring look! The old girl owes me a thousand dollars! Which, at compound interest for fifty years, would now amount to one billion dollars! Haaa! Would I ever be glad to see her again!" he said, his fingers twitching greedily.

Donald sighed. "Let’s go eat, kids. For just a minute there, I thought Uncle Scrooge was human!"

The nephews wandered off toward the galley, leaving Scrooge to watch the rest of the sunset and try to convince himself that Goldie’s debt was his only concern.

After several days at sea, they docked in Skagway. Scrooge bounded down the gangplank with the energy of a twenty-year-old and eagerly took in the sights, sounds and smells of the Great North once more. "Now for the trek to Whitehorse! Then down the Yukon to Dawson!"

Donald followed, carrying a heavy suitcase. "You still haven’t told us why you wanted us to come along!"

Scrooge leaned in confidentially. "The Klondike is a fearsome place, boys! It’s swarming with claim jumpers and cutthroats! I need you to guard my hoard of nuggets!" He headed into a store. "We’ll go in here and buy outfits for the rugged trail ahead!"

Soon they were heading up the Chilcoot pass with heavy bags of supplies. At first, Scrooge was elated by nostalgia, but the exercise and altitude soon took their toll. He pressed on as far as he could, but finally fell on his stomach with a wheeze. "I haven’t got my old vim, Donald! You’ll have to carry me. It’s only a few feet to the top."

"Only a few feet over half a mile!" Donald grumbled, but carried his uncle on his back nonetheless.

"Stop griping! When I was your age, I crossed this pass with two hundred pounds on my back!"

"If you were as full of hot air then as you are now, you probably floated over like a balloon!" Donald quipped.

Scrooge let that pass...for now. He had planned to berate him later, but before he had the chance, they reached Whitehorse and its airfield. When the manager happened by and recognized Scrooge, he realized that he owned the airline. The long hike had been completely unnecessary, when they could have flown to Whitehorse at no charge. After that, he was too sheepish to say anything.

They flew to Dawson, and Scrooge peered out the window with interest, trying to spot landmarks. "There’s the Klondike River stretching off to the east."

"Where’s your claim, Uncle Scrooge?" Donald asked.

"Farther north. We have to walk to get there."

They landed, and Scrooge gladly gave in to the boys’ request to see the sights of the old town before moving on. He wandered down the street with a distant look, lost in the memories. So long ago, and yet just like yesterday… The storefronts…the boardwalk…the line of the mountains… But it was so quiet! Half the buildings were boarded up or remodeled. Nothing looked quite the same, and yet—

"Where did you meet Glittering Goldie, Unca Scrooge?" Huey asked.

"Right about there!" he said without hesitation, pointing. "Her honky-tonk was known as the Blackjack Ballroom." He led the boys closer to the edifice in question, and broke into a grin to see the familiar swinging doors still intact. "Well, what d’ya know! The old building’s still here! See the weathered sign!" How strange it felt to be back! And how bizarre it was for the Blackjack to be silent. No music, no sound of reveling…

Scrooge slowly pushed back the swinging doors and stepped inside. "Fifty years ago I came through these doors…" he said, more to himself than the boys. "A piano was playing over there by the stage, and Goldie, the Star of the North, was singing…" The dark ballroom looked just like he remembered it, but with less furniture and much more dust. He stepped in further, inhabiting the empty room with his imagination. "She was singing ‘After the Ball’ in a voice as pretty as the crackle of new bills…" he said quietly, staring back through the years until he could almost hear her voice in the stillness.

He suddenly became aware that his grand-nephews were smiling knowingly at him, and he abruptly pulled himself back to the present. "Ha! One thousand dollars at compound interest! Wait ‘til I get my hands on that old gal!" he said gruffly, spinning to head for the door.

Two of the boys grabbed him and pulled him backward. "Don’t be so doggoned greedy! Tell us what happened when you met Goldie!"

Scrooge indulged them for a bit, telling them the highlights of that fateful night when the Goose Egg Nugget made its debut. He left out quite a few details about Goldie’s stay at White Agony Creek, glossing over it all as best he could. They were only boys, after all.

Just as he was telling about Goldie’s anger as they parted company at the end of the month, Donald came in the door. "Hey! I’ve been talking to some old-timers! They say Goldie left town years ago and hasn’t been seen since!"

Scrooge’s heart sank. Everything had looked so much the same, he had half expected her to come slinking down the stairs behind the bar like she had all those years ago. He shook off his disappointment and roared, "Wouldn’t you know it! Somebody owes you a billion dollars and they skip town every time! Well, the trip won’t be a failure. I can still go after my gold cache."

"Sure," Dewey said. "If you can remember where it is!"

"Don’t worry, boys. I haven’t skipped my memory medicine."

"Let us count the capsules just to be sure," Donald said with a frown, spilling the pills into his hand. "Yep. You’ve been obeying doctor’s orders."

Scrooge leaned back against one of the support columns and got a dreamy look on his face. "I could find my way to White Agony Creek in the dark!"

"Not tonight, you won’t!" Donald grumbled, heading for the hotel.

"We ducks will save that agony for tomorrow!" added Huey.

"Good night, Unca Scrooge!"

But he wasn’t listening, lost again in the maelstrom of memories.

The next day, Scrooge led the four younger ducks across the harsh Yukon landscape toward his old home. As they made their way through White Agony Valley, a small log cabin came into view. "Is that your cabin, Unca Scrooge?" asked one of the boys.

"Yeah! Just like I left it, except—somebody’s living in it!" he gasped. "And somebody’s been digging the gravel bar! My claim’s been jumped! Wait here. I gotta see if my cache of nuggets is still there!" He began running toward the cabin.

*WAM!*

He stopped in his tracks as buckshot zoomed through his hat, then scurried back behind the rocks where his nephews were waiting. "Whoever jumped this claim sure is the ornery kind! Well, I’m not hankering for a shooting war. We’ll lay low ‘til dark, then use strategy."

They did just that. The Yukon twilight descended early, and Donald and Scrooge prepared to move. "You kids stay here and guard the packs. Donald and I will sneak down to the cache." Scrooge crept through the shadows across the oddly familiar terrain. "If the gold is still there, we’ll try to dig if out with our hands, so as to make no noise!"

"Where do we dig?" Donald asked.

"At a place that’s marked by four rocks in a square. Speaking of rocks, this big soft one wasn’t here when I mined these parts!" He poked a large furry lump in their path. The lump unrolled itself and roared angrily.

"Ye cats! It’s a bear!"

Donald and Scrooge took off running, attempting to escape into the trees, but the bear followed them. They raced toward the forest with the bear snapping at their heels.

"Blackjack!" rang out a sharp female voice. "That will do, Blackjack. Those prowlers won’t be around any more tonight."

The bear obediently turned around and padded off toward the sound of her voice.

"Unca Donald! Unca Scrooge!" Huey called. "Do you see what I see?"

Scrooge looked where the boy was pointing, at two figures silhouetted in the moonlight. "A little old lady walking away with the bear! Well, if an old hag and a tame bear think they can keep Scrooge McDuck from his gold…" He marched down the ridge within earshot and shouted, "Come back and fight! Come back and—" Another blast of buckshot perforated his hat, and the bear bounded toward him. "Most obliging critters I ever saw!" he yelped, following his nephews into the night.

The ducks made camp some distance from the cabin, concealing most of the light from their fire behind some rocks.

"Things aren’t going so good, huh?" said Huey.

"You’ve come back and found a tough old lady’s jumped your claim!" Louie said.

"Those nuggets will be hard to take!" said Dewey.

"I know what!" Donald said suddenly. "Go into town and get the law after her!"

"No!" Scrooge snapped. "I…" He coughed nervously. "I kinda hope to keep the law out of this. Y’see, I never kept up the taxes on that claim. It doesn’t belong to me any more than to her."

"Oho! So you’re claim-jumping your own claim!" Donald said accusingly.

"Well, it amounts to that…" Scrooge grumbled.

Goldie O’Gilt was not having a good week. She been sick earlier, and still wasn’t back to her full strength. The cold Yukon winters were starting to bother her more and more, and now even the mild weather of what passed for summer seemed too chilly. Moving into a real house in town would remedy much of that, but that would take money—something she no longer had.

And now, on top of all her other troubles, she had claimjumpers to deal with. It wasn’t the first time, nor was it likely to be the last, but it did get tiresome after awhile. And these were particularly pesky claimjumpers, too. Trespassers usually weren’t brave enough to come back after Blackjack chased them off.

She was hoping they would give up by morning, but, no, they were still there. Her eyes weren’t as good as they once had been, but she could see figures moving about on the edge of the forest.

"Gold! Gold!" came a shout from the trees. "Come get the old lady’s gold!"

Goldie knew she couldn’t possibly hit the person shouting from this distance, but nonetheless she fired off a round of buckshot in his general direction. "Blackjack!" she called. Better let her ursine friend do the running for her. "Blackjack!" she yelled again. "Where are you, Blackjack?" Her bear was nowhere to be seen. She went to check one of his favorite nap spots, in the lee of a ridge of boulders. He wasn’t there, either. Blackjack’s gone! They’ve kidnapped him! she realized with alarm. Well, that bear wasn’t the only guard I had to foil claimjumpers…

She fired at one of several boxes hanging in the pines above the noisy claimjumper. Despite her age, she was still a good shot, and brought down the box on the first try. The mosquito trap shattered and released a thick cloud of very annoyed mosquitoes. The claimjumper yelped and tried to run away, but it was no use. He would be itching for days! Goldie smirked. That would teach him to call her an old lady. Even if it was true, she did not like his tone.

"I’ve been running outlaws off this claim for forty years, and I’ll keep on doing it!" she said to herself, flexing a nonexistent bicep as she went back into the cabin.

Suddenly, she felt the barrel of a gun pressing into the small of her back. "Oh, no, you won’t! You’ll drop that peashooter and start acting like a lady!" said a surprisingly youthful voice.

She dropped her shotgun, put her hands in the air, and froze. "Who are you? How did you get in here?" The gun stopped pressing into her back, and she turned to look at her foe. "Good heavens! Three little boys!" she said, stunned. One was holding a broom. So it hadn’t been a gun in her back, after all! She nearly laughed.

"Yeah! The Bright Idea Boys!" said the one with the broom.

"Who are you?" another asked.

She plopped down in a chair to rest her shaky legs and gestured at a picture of herself taken back in 1899, in her prime. "Well, if it’s any of your doggoned business, I’m the owner of this claim," she said shortly. "One Glittering Goldie by name!"

The boys looked shocked. "You’re Glittering Goldie?"

"Our boss out there is awfully anxious to meet you!"

Goldie scowled. "The pleasure is all his!"

"He says you owe him a billion dollars!"

Her eyes widened in disbelief. "Who would try to take a billion dollars from a starving old woman?"

"Scrooge McDuck."

"Scrooge McDuck!" she sputtered. Time stopped, and for a moment, Goldie didn’t trust her ears. She staggered from her chair and grasped the bureau for support. "You’re right. He would do it! Oh, my goodness. My stars! This is the end of everything!" Against her will, tears welled up in her eyes. She went to the door and looked out at the land, shaking her head. "The forty years I’ve scratched a living from these frozen rocks…the lonely winters…the cold…the mosquitoes… All for nothing!" She should have been angry, but the fight had left her. What use was it?

"What happened to your dance hall, Goldie?" asked one of the boys.

She returned to her chair, no longer trusting her legs to hold her. "It went broke after the gold rush. You may have wondered what became of us old-time girls of the Yukon. Well, you’re looking at one now!" she wept.

One of the boys patted her hand. "You’ve had enough tough luck, Goldie. We won’t tell Unca Scrooge that you’re here."

Uncle? Not grandfather? Interesting, but she was beyond caring.

"Too late! Louie’s already taken the beanshooter and scrammed!" The two remaining boys peeked out the door. Goldie rummaged for a handkerchief.

"Uh oh! Bad news!"

"He’s coming, Goldie!" the boys said.

"Quick! Go outside! I must change my dress!" she said, rushing to the trunk at the foot of the bed. If only the moths hadn’t gotten in… The boys shut the door behind them as she scrambled to mask the cruelty of time.

Scrooge and Donald were nursing numerous mosquito bites when Louie ran up toting a shotgun. "Everything’s set! We’ve got her gun, and guess what! She’s Glittering Goldie!" he blurted.

Scrooge gasped, looking faint. "Goldie…" he whispered. "After all these years!"

Donald and Louie were grinning at him knowingly.

"Haa! This makes it just perfect!" He put his hat back on and shook off his emotion. "Come on! I’ll not only get my gold cache, I’ll get everything that old chiseler owns!"

Donald followed him as he walked toward the cabin. "Sure, sure. But is it necessary to comb your whiskers to collect an I.O.U.?" he teased.

Scrooge quickly stuffed the comb and mirror back into his pocket, then took out a yellowed slip of paper. "Here’s Goldie’s I.O.U. Lucky I remembered to bring it!"

"Yeah! What a memory!" Donald said.

They were at the door. Scrooge took a deep breath, determined to remain stern and unmoving, and knocked.

She had obviously been waiting, because she opened the door immediately.

All his resolve melted away, and for a moment all he could do was stare. She was even in the same old dress, although it had faded considerably.  She was gray, of course, but her eyes still shone with an emerald fire.

"Uh…hello, ma’am," he stammered, taking off his top hat.

"Good morning, Scrooge," she said with a smile.

He tried to reply but couldn’t.

"You’re still just as handsome as ever, Scrooge."

"You and your soft soap. If you weren’t so pretty I wouldn’t listen to you!" he said, his brow moistening with sweat. He shifted his weight awkwardly.

Goldie stood demurely, smiling in spite of herself. She wanted to hate him. She wanted to be angry. But all she really wanted to do was throw her arms around him.

Before she could, however, he shook off his flustered grin and burst out, "But let’s get down to business! You owe me a billion dollars!"

Goldie stepped back as he shoved the I.O.U. in her face. "But—"

"You remember the details. One thousand dollars at compound interest. It’s there in black and white," he said sternly.

"Are you insane? I don’t have a billion dollars!" she snapped.

"What do you have?"

She stood for a moment in open-mouthed shock, unable to believe he would really do this to her. All this time, she had thought that maybe, just maybe he still cared for her. Apparently she had been fooling herself.

She noticed Scrooge’s nephews glaring at him disapprovingly, but the miser’s face was hard. Fine. She unclipped her earrings, took off her bracelets and pearls, and removed the pearl comb in her hair. She laid all these on an old barrel that served as a table and added a paper from a bureau drawer to the pile. "Here is the deed to the claim…my last jewels. It’s all I can pay on your bill."

"I thought there’d be more! What did you do with all the money you made?" Scrooge demanded.

She turned away, because even after all this time he could probably tell in her eyes when she was lying. "If you must know, I used it to take care of the poor orphans who were left orphans by mining disasters." Yes, she had made donations to the orphanage, but the rest had gone for taxes on the Blackjack, meat to feed the other Blackjack, and aid for sister’s family in tough times. But why go into all that? This way sounded far more noble.

When Scrooge didn’t say anything, she lifted the hem of her skirt to keep the ostrich feathers from dragging in the dirt, and walked out. "Well, I’ll give Blackjack his freedom and be on my way," she said simply.

"Where are you doing?" Scrooge asked.

"To the poorhouse, naturally," she said without turning around. Well, okay, she would probably go live with her sister, but he didn’t need to know that. Make him suffer, the cad…

She walked slowly but steadily, wondering if he would relent.

Scrooge stood helplessly, watching her go. "She’s going on, without even looking back!" This wasn’t right. Years ago, he had chosen the pursuit of money over her. It was time to do the opposite. He ran after her. "Goldie, wait!" he yelled. "I’ve got a deal to make!"

She stopped and turned to face him with a look that could have withered flowers. "What?" she snapped.

"You once said you could dig more gold than I could! I’ll dig you a race! If you can dig more gold in ten minutes than I can, you can have the claim back—and all the gold you find, too!"

She considered it, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He was up to something, but… "I have nothing to lose. I’ll try it."

The triplet ducklings led Goldie to the top of a knoll, and Scrooge picked a spot nearer to the creek. Donald stood by with a watch, timing the contest. Scrooge swung his pick a few times at the barren gravel. He wasn’t really trying. Donald and they boys wouldn’t know the difference.

It wasn’t the first time Goldie had dug gold in a ballgown, although it always seemed strange. On her second swing, however, the ground crumbled away into a pit. "My pick broke through a crust! What’s down there?"

The three boys peeled back more dirt and they all peeked in. "Gold! A whole bushel of nuggets!" they exclaimed.

"Good heavens, no! It can’t be!" Scrooge wailing, dashing up the knoll. "It can’t be, but it is! There are the four rocks in a square! Goldie dug into my cache!" He threw himself on the ground and made a great show of lamenting the loss. "I forgot that I buried the nuggets on this knoll! I should have taken a capsule this morning!"

Goldie wept for joy, hiding her smile behind a handkerchief. He did care! He was just the same old Scrooge…too proud and stubborn to admit it. She knew he had done this on purpose…fixed it somehow so that she would find the gold. She could tell. She knew him. Even after all this time, she knew him, and she knew what he had done.

Donald helped the old duck to his feet, then led the way back into the cabin, where the deed to White Agony Valley changed hands one last time. Scrooge knew she saw through him, and for once he didn’t care. He did not, however, realize that his nephews found him equally transparent. But, as long as no one said anything, it was all the same.

Scrooge returned all her jewelry, too, of course. "It looks much better on you than it would on me, anyway," he said with a half-smile.