to Baxter. Then he leaned forward and grasped the man's hand.
"I congratulate you—Sergeant," he said, and smiled. "You should have had this step last year, for you've deserved it long enough." He looked away. "Your marching-orders come with it," he said. "But they've managed a good leave for you first."
Baxter's rough hands shook a little where he knuckled them down on the table-edge, and his rough voice was not quite steady. He was Canadian born, even as his fathers were, and he served his land simply and directly with all his simple powers.
"Ah!" he said, and the weight of his soul seemed to lighten with the breath. "I guess I can drive that horse, Sergeant. An' I don't mind tellin' you now—there's a little girl—she's waitin' six years—I guess maybe if they put me south she won't want to wait no longer!"
Tempest gave no answer. Baxter looked at him sharply; lost colour; spoke with suddenly thickened voice.
"Where have they put me at? Where? Not Herschel?"
Then, before Tempest's face, his own sagged and grew grey.
"God," he said in his throat, and sat down, and looked out straight before him with still eyes.
Tempest moved his papers with quiet hands. He had come sane and whole from the searching test of that last, loneliest, most terrible post of all which the North-West offers her children: Herschel Island on the rim of the Arctic Ocean; where the sun lies hid, and almost hid, a half year through; where the desolation and the silence take hands and walk together over the untrod snow, and the Northern Lights chase each other with curious shapes and silky noises across the great black cup of the sky. Tempest had taken his trick at that wheel, and had come from it unharmed. But he was a younger man than Baxter, and he had more education to teach him self-control. Besides, there had been no little girl waiting for him.
"I can represent the case at head-quarters if you like," he said. "But you know we're short of men. We always are."
