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"ON TOP OF THE WALL SAT BRIDGET-BRIDGET IN HER GREEN SPORT-COAT"

look away from the fire and to her face. It was as calm as the traditional May morning, as calm as her voice as she said:

"You had better foreclose. At least I should if I were you." She spoke with complete detachment, judicially.

"But you," he began, faltering,-her control seemed to him magnificent,-"it is your home. If it were not life and death for my mother-"

"Of course I understand," she assured him. "It is the only thing for you to do." "But you" he began again brokenly. "Oh, that is quite all right," she reassured him almost tenderly. "You must not think of me. I could realize on other I could realize on other property and pay it off; but since the trolley-'

"But it is not going through," he reminded her, sadly; it added to the tragedy. of her sacrifice.

"No, it is not going through, so I have no interest in holding the place. I told you at the time Bridget could not understand how I felt about it. She was always so sentimental about the house, I would not press it; but I would have sold out except that if the trolley came through I knew it would add greatly to the value as business property, of course. . In that case I would have paid off the mortgage and held out for a high price. I always detested the house, it is so hopelessly out of date and ugly, though I made the best of it for Harry's sake while I had to live here, and later there was no use in abusing it to Biddy till the time came to give it up. I raised a first mortgage of eight thousand soon after Harry died. A lonely woman needs so much, and is sometimes left with so very little business experience. I did the best I could." Her even tones seemed only bent on making him quite comfortable; there was no consciousness of duplicity to be condoned. He sat doubting his ears' evidence even while he quietly put the question:

"Then mine was a second mortgage?"

"Yes. You see, I had a chance to buy some unimproved lots beyond the common. I am not ready to sell them now, as they are doubling in value, so you must

just foreclose. If you don't quite come out even, my other property will eventually make up the difference. Of course I shall not try to evade my obligations, though one can, by technicalities, I am told. However, it is not necessary, or Christian, I think." The modesty of her tone precluded any notion of boasting. "So I am too glad to relieve your scruples. You must foreclose quite as if you had a business man to deal with instead of a mere stupid little woman who did not know enough to place a mortgage without your help.”

"Nor to suppress the fact that it was a second mortgage!" This was wrung from him as he rose, and a slight flush touched her cheek; but she only said gently:

"Surely you must have known. If it was my inadvertence, I am so sorry. Would it have made a difference?"

"Perhaps it would not have-then," he answered, and somehow got away.

At least Grace, as ever the perfect hostess, he thought bitterly, had not tried to detain him; had let him go with no hint in her manner of the slightest estrangement; had murmured greetings for hist mother, and if he met Bridget, would he avoid the subject of the mortgage, as she would probably hate him for doing his duty? Biddy never could understand, bless her heart!

He did meet Bridget as he plunged along the darkest bit of the common. The youngest Airedale catapulted against him, and Bridget's voice gave her away; she had been crying. His hand on her shoulder drew her to the first lamp-post: "What's up?" he said brusquely.

"It's all up," answered the girl, drearily, and though she tossed her head with the old gesture, the little frown would not so easily be gone. "The house is mortgaged to the hilt; we 've got to lose it. Grace is going to marry that doctor who made up their party; she does n't need me any more." In her loneliness she put out a hand and clutched his sleeve a moment. "She does n't want me or need me."

"Nor me either," he said dryly, and suddenly determined to let it go at that. Why

should he tell her that Grace had needed them both only to use them? Bridget of the Irish name must always cherish her illusions if she would be happy. Why should he tear away the last shred of one that was left to her?

She was sad now because her sacrifices, her incense, were no longer needed; why should he add his own bitter knowledge, that the shrine where they both had worshiped had never held a saint?

"There, Bridget woman, buck up!" he said, and at the cheering vernacular a bit of a smile quivered on the brink of her

tears.

"You've only just begun being needed. If you 've done your bit for Grace, what about me? It's up to you to keep at me, Bridget, for to-night I 'm ossifying. The man is knocked out; I'm only a professor, after all." It was true, though he had said it only because she needed to be needed; but that his need could be filled by Bridget or by any one he had not the least hope or even desire. He felt very old and jaded and indifferent; yet he did n't want Bridget to feel

So.

"You 're only a man, after all!" said. Bridget, with a look that seemed to see behind the bravado of his smile. "And it's bully of you." She shook hands with him on it, and went back along the common path.

Three days later he was summoned to his mother, and a week followed of precious hours filched from the time when he would be utterly alone. She died, and he returned to his work.

The world is not much of a place, but one has one's work in it. Bridget was doing hers. "Pigs are no joke," she told him when they met in the rain on the common one day.

"Nothing is," he answered grimly.

The day after that the telephone at his laboratory rang when he was effecting a ticklish transference of bacilli. He let it ring, at first politely, then with a nerveracking furious tinkle, vibrating into a buzz when he had taken off the receiver; finally came Bridget's voice.

"I want you!" it said. Nothing further,

and the operator only knew that "his party had cut off."

If Bridget wanted him that much he must go. It was not her way to ask help, but always to give it and to help herself. He had a motor out, and was at the farm in six minutes. The simple rambling farm-house, the elaborate up-to-date pighouses, were beyond the stone walls; in the bare oak-grove plump pigs were rooting for acorns beneath brown leaves heaped against the wall. On top of the wall sat Bridget-Bridget in her green sport-coat. She must have come out to

meet him. What was the matter? he wondered again as he jumped from the motor and hurried up the lane.

"What is it?" he demanded. She looked him over leisurely, then she slowly repeated:

"It seems too bad,' the walrus said, 'to make them trot so quick!""

"What do you want?"

"I'm looking for a partner!" she said cheerfully.

"In business?" he supposed.

"Business first, pleasure afterward," she said and laughed a little. "Really, this pig plant is getting beyond me; I can't run it alone."

"You want me to get you a likely young man, one of the college boys-”

"I want you." Bridget was always to the point. He gasped:

"But I'm not a business man."

"Heaven forbid!" she exclaimed; then with a wry little moue: "I know all about that mortgage, you guileless fool! You splendid simpleton! How could she! We won't talk about that."

"What do you want of me, a useless fool," he said bitterly.

"I want you to swing the big end of the stick, the scientific end. You solved the diet question when the piglets were dying off last year. We 've got to have hundreds where we now have dozens. You'll have a laboratory and every sort of experiment; we are near a pork famine in this country and we are very likely near war. If it

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Soft where you lie there drifts the big guns' mumble;
Close by your side the brown battalions swing;

By day and night the transport-wagons rumble;
By day and night the whining bullets sing:
Now can you hear the joke that ripples back
Through the loose ranks upon the shell-scarred track?

You who have found the thing beyond all treasure
And made it yours in those amazing hours,

And set your life to such exalted measure
That death, deserting his funereal towers,

Walked with you as a brother, kind, but grim
Till came the moment when you smiled at him.

Flashed there to you no swift and brilliant message,
Some tenuous vision of the appointed end,

Some divination and departing presage

Of that far bourn to which the nations trend

When not with blood the shrinking woods are wet

And the rose drapes the crumbling parapet?

Living Off the Country

By ROBERT E. PEARY

NE of the fundamental principles of all my arctic expeditions has been to depend upon the country itself for the fresh-meat supply. To this fact is due the entire absence of scurvy on all of my voyages. Contrary to a general idea, the arctic regions of northern Greenland, Ellesmere Land, and Grant Land have for the experienced hunter a considerable and most attractive fauna, and while there are certain parts where it is virtually impossible to find even so much as a stray polar hare, there are other regions where a very fair amount of meat can be obtained in a comparatively short time by those knowing how, and acquainted with arctic topography and the habits of arctic animals.

The arctic bill of fare includes fish, flesh, and fowl in considerable variety. The walrus and seal of the Eskimo are, of course, known to every child. Both furnish a strong and healthy diet, but few white men become really fond of it. There are, however, other animals in the region. which furnish delicacies that would grace the table of the finest hotel in any great city, as the musk-ox, reindeer, and polar hare. Polar bear, if young, makes a very acceptable steak. At any age the meat is not at all disagreeable when frozen and

eaten raw.

Of the sea animals, in addition to the walrus and the ringed or floe-seal, there are the harp- and the square-flipper seal, the flesh of both of which possesses a much less pronounced bouquet than the walrus and the floe-seal.

Of birds there are various kinds; the most abundant are the little auks, and next the Brünnich's guillemot. Then there are the eider-duck, the long-tailed duck, the brant, and the king-eider. It is possible also in some localities to get an occasional mess of ptarmigan, the arctic

white grouse. The various species of gulls are considered fine eating by the Eskimos; but in the North, as well as here, they are a bit rank to the white man.

Of fish there are two kinds, the grayling and a species of char that we called rather affectionately salmon-trout. In September, 1900, this latter fish kept alive for about ten days my party of six men and twenty-three dogs. It is undoubtedly the finest fish food to be found anywhere, in color a pale pink like salmon or unripe watermelon. Living in water never warmer than forty degrees, perhaps never above thirty-five degrees, it is the sweetest, firmest fish fiber in the world.

It is no small task to secure a supply of meat sufficient to keep hundreds of dogs alive and in good condition all winter, and to provide fresh meat for a crew of over twenty men and some fifty Eskimos. Hunting parties must be kept constantly in the field during the autumn months to meet the demand.

The mainstay in the way of food for the dogs is walrus, and weighing anywhere from 1000 to 3000 pounds, they provide the maximum of meat at a minimum of time and energy. During the months of July, August, and September these animals are to be found in large herds in Wolstenholme and Whale sounds, where they assemble to feed on the shell-fish abounding in those shallow waters. Here they may be seen basking in the sun on the ice-floes and cakes of ice, singly, or in groups ranging from two or three up into the hundreds. I have seen anywhere from one hundred to one hundred and fifty walrus on one large ice-pan, with an equally. large number in the surrounding water; but only on Littleton Island in Smith Sound and along the shore of the mainland opposite have I ever seen them on the rocks.

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