t, too swept off my feet by the
absurdity of it all. I could see Dinky-Dunk in the clear starlight,
taking the blankets off his team. He'd hurried to the shack, without
even unharnessing the horses. I could hear the wheel-tires whine on the
crisp snow, for the poor beasts were tired and restless. I went straight
to the buckboard into which Dinky-Dunk was climbing. He looked like a
cinnamon-bear in his big shaggy coat. And I couldn't see his face. But I
remembered how it had looked in the doorway. It was the color of a tan
shoe. It was too weather-beaten and burnt with the wind and sun-glare
ever to turn white, or, I suppose, it would have been the color of
paper.

"Haven't you," I demanded, "haven't you any explanation for acting like
this?" He sat in the buckboard seat, with the reins in his hands.

"I guess I've got the first right to that question," he finally said in
a stifled voice.

"Then why don't you ask it?" was my answer to him. Again he waited a
moment before speaking, as though he felt the need of weighing his
words.

"I don't need to--now!" he said, as he tightened the reins.

"Wait," I called out to him. "There are certain things I want you to
know!"

I was not going to make explanations. I would not dignify his brute-man
stupidity by such things. I scarcely know what I intended to do. As I
looked up at him there in his rough fur coat, for a moment, he seemed
millions and millions of miles away from me. I stared at him, trying to
comprehend his utter lack of comprehension. I seemed to view him across
the same gulf which separates a meditative zoo visitor from some
abysmally hirsute animal that eons and eons ago must have been its
cave-fellow and hearth-mate. But now we seemed to have nothing in
common, not even a language with which to link up those lost ages. Yet
from all that mixture of feelings only one survived: I didn't want my
husband to go.

It was the team, as far as I can remember, that really decided the
thing. They had been restive, backing and jerking and pawing and
nickering for their feed-box. And suddenly they jumped forward. But this
time they kept going. Whether Dinky-Dunk tried to hold them back or not
I can't say. But I came back to the shack, shivering. Percy, thank
Heaven, was in his room.

"I think I'll turn in!" he called out, quite casually, through the
partition.

I said "All right," and sat down in front of the fire, trying to
straighten things out. My Dinky-Dunk was