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438 o' tinkerin' to patch. An'—oh, well, I guess we keep busy oneway an' another."

Dick nodded. Baxter had had the wisdom to count the centre of the world from where his own feet stood instead of some three or four thousand miles to the southward. That stolid nature of his brought its own compensation. Two years of Herschel Island would have driven Dick insane.

"But you won't be sorry to be going out in the summer?" he asked.

"Why—I guess not." Baxter jerked his thumb at a photograph on the wall near the stove. "That's what's waitin' for me outside," he said.

Dick looked at the photograph with lazy interest. It showed a homely face of about average intelligence and amiability. But Baxter's voice was deep with an immense pride and reverence.

"Ah!" Dick said. "I shouldn't leave her too long, Sergeant, or you'll find some other fellow has run off with her."

"Not much." Baxter accepted the compliment with abashed delight. "Why, she says" he thrust his hand into his tunic, drew it away again, and grinned all over his kindly weather-beaten face. "She'll wait," he said. "I'm not afraid o' losing my Miralma. Why, she writes every week, though she knows I only get mail twice a year. An' I writes lots to her. I tell her all the things I'm thinking about—and I do a lot o' thinking up here. Brayne and Selkirk, they're young fellows, an' they like riotin' around. I like thinkin'."

"What do you think about?" asked Dick curiously.

"Oh, everything. Whales, now. They live a thousand years, and they mate once only, for keeps."

"Dear me." Dick's half-closed eyes flickered open. "I'm afraid you couldn't teach man such constancy. He is civilised."

"Sometimes," said Baxter, ponderously. "I get to wonderin' if civilisation is all it's cracked up to be."

"Do you? Why, it has taught us how to evade the harm we do instead of getting caught every time."

"An' I don't know as that's a very good thing, either."