"With that she continood to argoo the case with her umbrella, never lettin' go of my shirt collar. Sir, she argood until dinner time, an' then she resoomed the debate until I fell asleep. The last I knowed she was still conversin'. "An' so it went next day, all day long, an' the next day. I couldn't stand it no longer so I started for Fort Carcajau. But she bein' onto a mule, run me down easy, an' kep' beside me conversin' volooble. "Sir, do you know what it is to listen to umbrella argooment every day, all day long, from sun-up to night-fall? An' then some more? "I was loony, I tell you, when we met the mission priest. 'Marry me,' sez she, 'or I'll talk you to death!' I didn't realise what she was sayin' an' what I answered. But them words I uttered done the job, it seems. "We camped there an' slep' for two days without wakin.' When I waked up I was convalescent. "She was good to me. She made soup an' she wrapped blankets onto me an' she didn't talk no more until I was well enough to endoor it. "An' by'm'by she brooke the nooze to me that we was married an' that she had went as far as to marry me in the sacred cause of science because man an' wife is one, an' what I knowed about them ellerphants she now had a right to know. "Sir, she had put one over on me. So bein' strickly hones' I had to show her where them ellerphants lay froze up under the marsh." V Where the ambition of this infatuated woman had led her appalled us all. The personal sacrifice she had made in the name of science awed us. Still when I remembered that detaining arm sleepily lifted from the nuptual hammock, I was not so certain concerning her continued martyrdom. I cast an involuntary glance of critical appraisal upon James Skaw. He had the golden hair and beard of the early Christian martyr. His features were classically regular; he stood six feet six; he was lean because fit, sound as a hound's tooth, and really a superb specimen of masculine health. Curry him and trim him and clothe him in evening dress and his physical appearance would make a sensation at the Court of St. James. Only his English required manicuring. The longer I looked at him the better I comprehended that detaining hand from the hammock. _Fabas indulcet fames_. Then, with a shock, it rushed over me that there evidently had been some ground for this man's letters to me concerning a herd of frozen mammoths. Professor Bottomly had not only married him to obtain the information but here she was still camping on the marsh! "James Skaw," I said, tremulously, "where are those mammoths?" He looked at me, then made a vague gesture: "Under the mud--everywhere--all around us." "Has _she_ seen them?" "Yes, I showed her about a hundred. There's one under you. Look! you can see him through the slush."