He spoke cheerfully, trying to bring a smile to the other's pale face. Pelliter dropped back with a sigh. "No-- there isn't any use feeling my pulse," he repeated. "It isn't sickness, Bill-- not sickness of the ordinary sort. It's in my brain-- that's where it is. Think of it-- nine months up here, and never a glimpse of a white man's face except yours. Nine months without the sound of a woman's voice. Nine months of just that dead, gray world out there, with the northern lights hissing at us every night like snakes and the black rocks staring at us as they've stared for a million centuries. There may be glory in it, but that's all. We're 'eroes all right, but there's no one knows it but ourselves and the six hundred and forty-nine other men of the Royal Mounted. My God, what I'd give for the sight of a girl's face, for just a moment's touch of her hand! It would drive out this fever, for it's the fever of loneliness, Mac-- a sort of madness, and it's splitting my 'ead." "Tush, tush!" said MacVeigh, taking his mate's hand. "Wake up, Pelly! Think of what's coming. Only a few months more of it, and we'll be changed. And then-- think of what a heaven you'll be entering. You'll be able to enjoy it more than the other fellows, for they've never had this. And I'm going to bring you back a letter-- from the little girl--" Pelliter's face brightened. "God bless her!" he exclaimed. "There'll be letters from her-- a dozen of them. She's waited a long time for me, and she's true to the bottom of her dear heart. You've got my letter safe?" "Yes." MacVeigh went back to the rough little table and added still further to his report to the Commissioner of the Royal Mounted in the following words: "Pelliter is sick with a strange trouble in his head. At times I have been afraid he was going mad, and if he lives I advise his transfer south at an early date. I am leaving for Churchill two weeks ahead of the usual time in order to get medicines. I also wish to add a word to what I said about wolves in my last report. We have seen them repeatedly in packs of from fifty to one thousand. Late this autumn a pack attacked a large herd of traveling caribou fifteen miles in from the Bay, and we counted the remains of one hundred and sixty animals killed over a distance of less than three miles. It is my opinion that the wolves kill at least five thousand caribou in this patrol each year. "I have the honor to be, sir, "Your obedient servant, " WILLIAM MACVEIGH, Sergeant, "In charge of detachment." He folded the report, placed it with other treasures in the waterproof rubber bag which always went into his pack, and returned to Pelliter's side.