etter result than he had. We've read and
re-read his stuff. We've dreamed, and wondered, and guessed till we know
the whole of Unaga like the pages of one of his books. We've failed to
find the growing ground of this darn Adresol, and, like your father,
we've had to content ourselves with a trade in the dried stuff these
dopey rascals choose to hand us. In twice the years he had at his
disposal we haven't advanced a step along the path he's handed to us."

He turned the pages of some of the notebooks while the smoke of Marcel's
pipe distributed a pleasant haze about the room.

"Now your father was a heap more than a clever scientific man," he went
on a moment later, "and I get that through his notes, which I well-nigh
know by heart. He was a reasoner in those things that had nothing to do
with his science. Guess he was dead practical, too, well-nigh a genius
that way. As for his courage and patience--well, I guess you've only got
to look around you at this old fort. You won't need my hot air to tell
you of it. So I'm left guessing at the wonder of it. _He just missed the
whole point of his own observations, and knowledge, and research._"

A smile crept into Steve's eyes as he made the final announcement. It
grew into his characteristic short laugh.

"Oh, I'm not going to tell you how wise I am. I'm not going to tell you
your great old father was a fool man, and I'm the wise guy that's
figgered out all he missed. I'm the fool man who's been handed a fool's
luck. I was sitting around over the camp-fire on the trail from Seal Bay
with nothing better to do than to listen to the crazy dream of an
ignorant, superstitious neche. It was in that fool yarn I found the
answer to all the questions we've asked in fourteen years. As I tell
you, it was just a crazy notion till I started in to fit it to the
arguments your father handed to us. Then I saw in a flash, and got the
start of my life. There's times that I'm still wondering if I'm not
plumb crazed."

He indicated a notebook which he had opened. Its pages were scored with
his own pencilled notes.

"I don't need to worry you with all the stuff written here," he went
on. "You know it like I do. But I'm going to read a piece so you'll get
the full drift of my argument when I hand it you. First, though, we'll
reconstruct some. The neches go out for this stuff in the open season.
They start when the ice breaks, and don't get back to home till things
freeze up again. That's imp