ectly glorious.

Really I think it is a pity that Dr. Grant should bury himself in such a
place. He ought to live in our atmosphere, for he is entirely fitted for
it.

So good night, Aunt Jennie, with best love from your
HELEN.

CHAPTER XIII

_From John Grant's Diary_

During the years that I spent abroad, in study, there were times when a
tremendous longing would come over me, so great that I was sorely tempted
to run away, even if for a few weeks only, and revel in the satisfaction
of my desire. It would seize upon me during long evenings, when I was
sometimes a little wearied with hard work. I hungered at such times for
the smoke of a camp-fire, for its resinous smells, for the distant calls
of night birds, for the crackling flames that cast strange lights upon
friendly faces.

All this was ours on the evening we spent after our little caribou hunt.
Miss Jelliffe, who had had some slight experience with small target
rifles, made a good shot at a fine stag, and we were all very cheerful.
The fire burned brightly before the tent she shared with Susie, and the
dry dead pine with logs of long-burning birch crackled merrily. Over the
little lake, behind the dark conifers and the distant hills, the sun had
gone down in a glory of incandescent gold and crimson.

After we had finished our supper we all sat around the blaze and the
tales began, of big caribou and mighty salmon. Yet after a time, as
one always must in this country, we drifted off to stories of the
never-ending fight against mighty powers.

Very simply, in brief sentences, with short intervals to permit of more
accurate recollection, good old Sammy opened to us vistas of unending
fields of ice whereupon men slew the harp-seals, and pictured to us the
manner in which the toll of death sometimes turns against the slayers. He
also spoke of fishing schooners tossed by fierce gales, drifting by the
side of mountainous bergs of ice rimmed with foam from the billows lashed
in fury, and of seams that had opened as the ship spewed off its creeping
oakum. I am sure we could all see the men at the pumps, working until
their stiffened arms and frozen hands refused the bidding of brains
benumbed by cold and hunger.

"Yes, ma'am, it's hard, mighty hard, times and times, but when yer gets
through wid it ye'll still be there, if yer has luck, and them as doesn't
get ketched gets back ter th' wife an' young, 'uns, an' is thankful they
kin start all over agai