corners of the fields, while from the direction of the hills toward the east the whippoorwills called incessantly.  During the day the air was full of odours, distilled as it were by the heat of high noon—­the sweet smell of ripening apples, the fragrance of warm sap and leaves and growing grass, the smell of cows from the nearby pastures, the pungent, ammoniacal suggestion of the stable back of the house, and the odour of scorching paint blistering on the southern walls.

July was very hot.  No breath of wind stirred the vast, invisible sea of air, quivering and oily under the vertical sun.  The landscape was deserted of animated life; there was little stirring abroad.  In the house one kept within the cool, darkened rooms with matting on the floors and comfortable, deep wicker chairs, the windows wide to the least stirring of the breeze.  Adler dozed in his canvas hammock slung between a hitching-post and a crab-apple tree in the shade behind the stable.  Kamiska sprawled at full length underneath the water-trough, her tongue lolling, panting incessantly.  An immeasurable Sunday stillness seemed to hang suspended in the atmosphere—­a drowsy, numbing hush.  There was no thought of the passing of time.  The day of the week was always a matter of conjecture.  It seemed as though this life of heat and quiet and unbroken silence was to last forever.

Then suddenly there was an alerte.  One morning, a day or so after Hattie Campbell had returned to the City, just as Lloyd and Bennett were finishing their breakfast in the now heavily awninged glass-room, they were surprised to see Adler running down the road toward the house, Kamiska racing on ahead, barking excitedly.  Adler had gone into the town for the mail and morning’s paper.  This latter he held wide open in his hand, and as soon as he caught sight of Lloyd and Bennett waved it about him, shouting as he ran.

Lloyd’s heart began to beat.  There was only one thing that could excite Adler to this degree—­the English expedition; Adler had news of it; it was in the paper.  Duane had succeeded; had been working steadily northward during all these past months, while Bennett—­

“Stuck in the ice! stuck in the ice!” shouted Adler as he swung wide the front gate and came hastening toward the veranda across the lawn.  “What did we say!  Hooray!  He’s stuck.  I knew it; any galoot might ‘a’ known it.  Duane’s stuck tighter’n a wedge off Bache Island, in Kane Basin.  Here it all is; read it for yourself.”

Bennett took the paper from him and read aloud to the effect that the Curlew, accompanied by her collier, which was to follow her to the southerly limit of Kane Basin, had attempted the passage of Smith Sound late in June.  But the season, as had been feared, was late.  The enormous quantities of ice reported by the whalers the previous year had not debouched from the narrow channel, and on the last day of June the Curlew had found her further progress effectually blocked.  In essaying to force her way into a lead the ice had closed in behind her, and, while not as yet nipped, the vessel was immobilised.  There was no hope that she would advance northward until the following summer.  The collier, which had not been beset, had returned to Tasiusak with the news of the failure.