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“Spread, air your plans,” he said, “and at once you lose interest in them; they never again belong entirely to you; besides, people shy at you. Hopes keep as invisible as your heart.”

He was wonderful in his firm belief that he of all men was destined to discover the North Pole.

And here after all my wanderings and bizarre experiences, my strong ambitions and brilliant ideas, I, with my vast wealth and equally vast longings, winded up with this strange trio. But their buoyant confidence attracted me, it was an entirely new atmosphere, permeated with a wild, mystic charm. Saunders’ beautiful, invisible star, Sheldon’s vast body of limpid, fresh water, and the Pole, with all the mysteries of the dead portion of the earth surrounding it; here was a new experience, a grand, new experience, unique; enough to satisfy the most blasé.

Sheldon and Saunders remained till late, but when Saxe. and I were alone he regarded me keenly, gravely.

“As usual,” he said, “you have disregarded all advice, flung aside all plans definite or otherwise, to plunge headlong into—have you any idea what it is you are about to take up?”