He passed into his cabin, shut the door, and locked it. Dick and Baxter took Andree back to the barracks. But, an hour later, when Andree sat in Baxter's little room, mending a net and singing her soft French songs over it, Baxter saw Dick climbing the little slope that led up the wind-swept plateau beyond. It was dark when he came back, and the cool indifference of his manner was unchanged. But Baxter knew.
"That fellow is goin' to be tried-out—hard—before he's done wi' Grange's Andree," he told himself.
Day by day the long fierce billows of the Arctic bowed their old grey-bearded heads lower before the march of the ice. Day by day Dick fretted to be gone, and waited for the snow, and helped Baxter in his round of duties, and looked after Andree. She obeyed Dick implicitly, with a frank delight. But she was a torment to the other men, and Baxter said no more than he felt when he one night expressed a belief that Andree would probably knife Selkirk directly as she had done Ogilvie.
"Did she tell you she'd killed Ogilvie?" said Dick sharply.
"Sure. Last night. He cheeked her, she said, an' she wasn't goin' to stand it. Wonderful what she takes from you." He raised himself, looking keenly at Dick. "If one could give a chap a warnin'," he began.
"One can't." Dick's tone was final. "Selkirk tells me we'll all be on half-rations directly. Is that so?"
"Why—there are four boats in that didn't mean to winter. We'll have all we want of fish and seal-meat, o' course, but we're going to suffer in the groceries. And I've got to keep a reserve, you know. The kiddies would peter out in a week if we fed them with oil and meat only. They've got too accustomed to flour and sugar and tea now."
"I'm afraid I'll have to beg enough to carry me to Macpherson. I fancy we should get off in a couple of days, now. Yes. I'll be glad. Damned glad. I want to be doing something."
He went out with a restlessness which he rarely showed, and followed Andree down to Ek-ki-do's igloo, where she went daily to play with the children. It was not needful to put Andree under restraint. Her love for him was the
