here my Kobuk is, I do!" murmured Loll plaintively.
The youngster was evidently getting tired of work. He was filling the
pail listlessly, emptying the contents over his own red little hand.

Jean's eyes roaming out over the shining ocean spaces, rested upon a
spot in the northwest. Very low on the rim of the sea lay a mountain
range, its purple and white ethereal in the distance.

"I _said_ I whisht I knew where my Kobuk is!" There was a slight
belligerent tone in Lollie's voice which Jean, doubtless, failed to
catch, for she mused on:

"Though I know that coast over there is practically uninhabited it
always gives me a feeling of being closer to people when I can see
it--and a sense of delightful unknown things lying just there beyond
the range." She paused as if contemplating some illusive thought.

Harlan, looking at her profile, became aware that her chin, while of an
engaging firmness, had that impalpably soft texture that suggests the
powdered wing of a creamy butterfly. He was surprised that he had
never noticed it before. The tam slanted obligingly to the other side
and left exposed the lobe of a small ear that was as rosy in tint as
the delicate tiny clam shells he occasionally marveled at on the beach.
The curve at the back of her neck had the look that invites kisses in a
very little girl who has her curls knotted up on the top of her
head. . . . He found mining a distinctly agreeable occupation.

"You are like a soft, cool breeze from the sea, after a hot day in the
city," he was astonished to find himself saying. But his statement was
lost in a verbal explosion from the enraged Lollie.

"Gosh darn it! _Nobody_ 'll notice _me_!" The little fellow was
looking up at Jean with petulant indignation. "I'm going to find
Kobuk!"

He flung his pail to the sand as if casting all thought of fickle woman
from him and ran off down the beach toward the cabin, deigning not to
hear Jean as she called to him.

"The poor little man!" The girl's voice was sympathetic as she looked
after the flying figure of her nephew. "I know he must feel lonely
sometimes with no one of his own age to play with."

"It's a feeling he shares, then, with some of us older ones."

Jean glanced at Harlan quickly. "Then why--" she began, and checked
herself.

She wanted to ask him why, if this were so, he had buried himself in
the isolated post of Katleean. She wanted to know why he, young,
educated, brave, with the worl