“That doesn’t matter so much any more, I guess.” Jack paused. “Of course the home folks mean a lot to a fellow when he’s out here. Patsy writes to me, quite a lot, just the home town news. Wants to know what I’m doing, and tells me what she’s doing. Half a dozen other girls do the same. It’s their patriotic duty. Mighty nice of them, but it’s just their homework, that’s all.” “Don’t be too sure!” Stew was in dead earnest. “You just keep on writing to Patsy.” “Oh, sure I will!” Jack laughed. “And all the rest of them. But it may be a long time between letters just now. Lie down and rest,” he suggested. “I’ll call you when I feel like changing places.” “Don’t wait too long.” Stew stood up and yawned. After a short walk up and down the pebbly beach Stew stretched out for a few winks of sleep. Jack gripped his automatic and patrolled the beach. As he walked he thought of all the circumstances that had brought him to this wild spot. He had always wanted to fly. Flying toy airplanes had been his favorite occupation in grade-school days. The strange, gypsylike life his family had lived in summer, camping in some Indian cabin or roughing it on an island, with canoes, rowboats and sailboats always at hand, had prepared him for all this. After high school he had spent a winter on an island as assistant ranger. His only contact with the outside world had been by radio. For five months no boat came to the ice-locked island. Snowshoes, long inspection marches, nights in deserted cabins, wolves, moose, and snow buntings. He had loved it all. “Now we haven’t even a radio,” he thought. It was strange how the jigsaw puzzle of his life appeared to fit together. “I have always had my violin,” he thought. “And I still have one,” he reminded himself, with a start. When midnight came and went with no sign of life on the island, he at last took the violin from its case and began playing “Ave Maria” softly. “Ave Maria.” How strange it sounded there in the silent night. He played on. For a full hour he was lost to his surroundings. The simple things he had played as a small boy came back to him. So, too, did the more difficult selections he had played with the college orchestra in his home town, and the one that had won first place for him in the state high-school contest. “That’s all in the past,” he thought once. But he wasn’t sure. He sat on a fallen palm tree, with the violin across his knee, and dreamed of a great concert orchestra and of a funny little conductor with a shock of white hair—a very fine musician. And in that dream he saw himself playing as the soloist of the performance.