me, boys, but we'll draw a winner yet, and I
ask you to swear that you'll come back with me next year, please God, to
finish the work we've begun."

Then we gripped hands in that desolate place, and took our solemn oath,
and God knows we meant to keep it.

It did not take long to strike camp, I can tell you. The men were
bustling about like boys and we had nothing to think of now but the
packing of the food and the harnessing of the dogs and ponies, for we
were leaving everything else behind us.

At the last moment before we turned northward I planted the Union Jack
on the highest hummock of snow, and when we were a hundred yards off I
looked back through the gloom and saw it blowing stiffly in the wind.

I don't think I need tell how deeply that sight cut me, but if life has
another such moment coming for me all I have to say is that I hope I may
die before I live to see it--which is Irish, but most damnably true.

That was twelve o'clock noon on the eighth day of June and anybody may
make what he likes of what I say, but as nearly as I can calculate the
difference of time between London and where we were in the 88th latitude
it was the very hour of my dear one's peril.

M.C.

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

EIGHTY-NINTH CHAPTER

Two weeks passed and if I suffered from getting up too soon I was never
conscious of it.

Once or twice, perhaps, in the early days I felt a certain dizziness and
had to hold on for a moment to the iron rail of my bedstead, but I was
too much occupied with the tender joys of motherhood to think much about
myself.

Bathing, dressing, undressing, and feeding my baby were a perpetual
delight to me.

What a joy it all was!

There must he something almost animal, even voluptuous, in mothers'
love, for there was nothing I liked so much as having baby naked on my
knee and devouring its sweet body all over with kisses--putting its
little fat hands and even its little fat feet into my mouth.

There must be something almost infantile, too, for sometimes after I had
talked to my darling with a flood of joyous chatter I would even find
myself scolding her a little, and threatening what I would do if she did
not "behave."

Oh, mysterious laws of motherhood! Only God can fathom the depths of
them.

It was just as if sixteen years of my life had rolled back, and I was
again a child in my mother's room playing with my dolls under the table.
Only there was something so wonderfu