ney on job-making
bureaus and a little more on war-ships.

Then we discovered what was in the old alligator-skin valise he carried.
It was books. Half the time he didn't have to read to us, but just
talked off the stuff he'd learned by heart. We got to know a lot before
the trip was half begun, just by associating with Thomas Jefferson
Brown--or Thomas Jefferson, as he was then.

We spent three months up about the Spicer Islands, and then came down
toward Southampton Land. Thomas Jefferson was the happiest man aboard
until we caught sight of a coast, and then the change began. After that
he'd get restless whenever land hove in sight.

Six weeks later we came down into Roes Welcome Sound, planning to get
out through Hudson Strait before winter set in. The fact that we were
almost homeward bound didn't seem to affect Thomas Jefferson. I saw the
beginning of the end when he said to me one day:

"Bobby, I've never seen this northern country. It's a big, glorious
country, and I'd like to go ashore."

There wasn't any use arguing with him. The cap'n tried it, we all tried
it, and at last Thomas Jefferson prepared to take his leave of us at
Point Fullerton, just eight hundred miles north of civilization, where
there's an Eskimo village and a police station of the Royal Northwest
Mounted. He came to me the day before we were going to take him ashore,
and said:

"Bobby, why don't you come along? Let's chum it, old man, and see what
happens."

When he went ashore, the next day, I went with him, and we each took
three months' supply of grub and our pay. From that hour there began the
big change--the change which turned Thomas Jefferson back into Thomas
Jefferson Brown, and which it took a girl to finish.

It came first in his eyes, and then in his laugh. After that he seemed
to grow an inch or two taller, and he lost that careless, shiftless way
which comes of what he called the _wanderlust_ bug. There wasn't so
much laughter in his eyes, but something better had taken its place--a
deeper, grayer, more thoughtful look, and he didn't play those queer
things with his mouth any more.

The police at Point Fullerton hardly had a glimpse of him as the
big, sunny, loose-jointed giant, Thomas Jefferson. He had become a
bronze-bearded god, with the strength of five men in his splendid
shoulders, and a port to his head that made you think of a piece of
sculpture.

"You can't be anything but a _man_ up here, Bobby," he said one