. Maybe I'm a freak. But I'm proud of this place.
Barring the inevitable lonesomeness that comes now and then, I can be
happier here than any place I've ever struck yet. This country grows
on one."

"Yes--on one's nerves," Hazel retorted.

Bill smiled, and, rising, began to clear away the dishes. Hazel
resisted an impulse to help. She would not work; she would not lift
her finger to any task, she reminded herself. He had put her in her
present position, and he could wait on her. So she rested an elbow on
the table and watched him. In the midst of his work he stopped
suddenly.

"There's oceans of time to do this," he observed. "I'm just a wee bit
tired, if anybody should ask you. Let's camp in the other room. It's
a heap more comfy."

He put more wood on the kitchen fire, and set a pot of water to heat.
Out in the living-room Hazel drew her chair to one side of the hearth.
Bill sprawled on the bearskin robe with another cigarette in his
fingers.

"No," he began, after a long silence, "this country doesn't get on
one's nerves--not if one is a normal human being. You'll find that.
When I first came up here I thought so, too; it seemed so big and empty
and forbidding. But the more I see of it the better it compares with
the outer world, where the extremes of luxury and want are always in
evidence. It began to seem like home to me when I first looked down
into this little basin. I had a partner then. I said to him: 'Here's
a dandy, fine place to winter.' So we wintered--in a log shack sixteen
foot square that Silk and Satin and Nigger have for a stable now. When
summer came my partner wanted to move on, so I stayed. Stayed and
began to build for the next winter. And I've been working at it ever
since, making little things like chairs and tables and shelves, and
fixing up game heads whenever I got an extra good one. And maybe two
or three times a year I'd go out. Get restless, you know. I'm not
really a hermit by nature. Lord, the things I've packed in here from
the outside! Books--I hired a whole pack train at Ashcroft once to
bring in just books; they thought I was crazy, I guess. I've quit this
place once or twice, but I always come back. It's got that home feel
that I can't find anywhere else. Only it has always lacked one
important home qualification," he finished softly. "Do you ever build
air castles?"

"No," Hazel answered untruthfully, uneasy at the trend of his talk.
She was lea