While she was opening her knife, “I believe,” he said, “yes, I believe you would help me about Ky—if you knew.” “Help you, how?” He fastened his eyes on the girl’s face. “Ky is one of us,” he said very low. “What do you mean?” “Only she is better at the game.” Hildegarde leaned nearer to catch the husky words. “No one who ever braved the North, no one who ever grappled with the ice, not one of them all has done it more courageously than Ky.” The shadow-ringed eyes sought the girl’s again. “Nobody could be quite indifferent to Ky who cared about—who—” He broke off, exhausted by his fruitless effort to sit upright. He dropped forward on his elbows and rested his bearded chin in his hands. The tawny tide poured in streams through his fingers, and hid the horror of them. “To-morrow,” he said, with his eyes on Hildegarde, “to-morrow Ky will be the sole survivor of the only expedition that ever reached the Pole.” CHAPTER XXIV Silent the girl sat there. But senses less alert than the hermit’s would have felt the passion of wonder that held her motionless. For all the world of difference between these two, the same light was shining in each face. “How does the time go?” He made a movement toward his pocket, and then dropped his hand. “Curious how I still forget—I left it—” Again the motion. “Will you put your watch where I can see it?” “Oh, go on; go on!” she urged. “My companion won’t go back without me.” “Yes, you have plenty of time. But for me there’ll be barely enough,” and the face that he turned an instant toward the ship— Oh, beyond doubting, his time was short! Out of her cow-boy hat she drew a long pin, and going to the foot of the bed she thrust the hatpin several inches into the peat wall above where the dog lay. But her near presence was so resented by the great explorer, Ky, that before the watch could be hung upon the pin, Hildegarde must needs retreat. She remembered the luncheon in her pocket, and offered Ky a share. No; Ky wanted nothing of a stranger. “Throw it down by the door,” said her master, and it was done. When Hildegarde had retired, the dog came down, and when he turned his blind eye about again, lo, a shining thing upon the wall. “So!” the sick man sank back satisfied. “Now to get you to help me about Ky, I must put twenty years into an hour. More than twenty, for I can’t remember when I began to think about finding the Pole. I played at it all my boyhood. I’ve worked at it ever since.” An instant Hildegarde dropped her shrinking eyes. For he was putting out that maimed hand for the cup. She heard the grate of rusty tin on the cracker-box, as his cleared voice went on, “I began by going in a revenue cutter to Port Barrow; and I had been in two arctic expeditions before the one I’m telling you about. But on both of those others I was the one man who wasn’t going for the Pole. I was going for experience. I never believed my chiefs would get there, but I always believed I would—later. I had theories.”