And despite himself, Frederick sat entranced; and when all the tale was told, he was aware of a queer emptiness.  He remembered back to his boyhood, when he had pored over the illustrations in the old-fashioned geography.  He, too, had dreamed of amazing adventure in far places and desired to go out on the shining ways.  And he had planned to go; yet he had known only work and duty.  Perhaps that was the difference.  Perhaps that was the secret of the strange wisdom in his brother’s eyes.  For the moment, faint and far, vicariously, he glimpsed the lordly vision his brother had seen.  He remembered a sharp saying of Polly’s.  “You have missed romance.  You traded it for dividends.”  She was right, and yet, not fair.  He had wanted romance, but the work had been placed ready to his hand.  He had toiled and moiled, day and night, and been faithful to his trust.  Yet he had missed love and the world-living that was forever a-whisper in his brother.  And what had Tom done to deserve it?—­a wastrel and an idle singer of songs.

His place was high.  He was going to be the next governor of California.  But what man would come to him and lie to him out of love?  The thought of all his property seemed to put a dry and gritty taste in his mouth.  Property!  Now that he looked at it, one thousand dollars was like any other thousand dollars; and one day (of his days) was like any other day.  He had never made the pictures in the geography come true.  He had not struck his man, nor lighted his cigar at a match held in a woman’s hand.  A man could sleep in only one bed at a time—­Tom had said that.  He shuddered as he strove to estimate how many beds he owned, how many blankets he had bought.  And all the beds and blankets would not buy one man to come from the end of the earth, and grip his hand, and cry, “By the turtles of Tasman!”

Something of all this he told Polly, an undercurrent of complaint at the unfairness of things in his tale.  And she had answered: 

“It couldn’t have been otherwise.  Father bought it.  He never drove bargains.  It was a royal thing, and he paid for it royally.  You grudged the price, don’t you see.  You saved your arteries and your money and kept your feet dry.”

VI

On an afternoon in the late fall all were gathered about the big chair and Captain Tom.  Though he did not know it, he had drowsed the whole day through and only just awakened to call for his ukulele and light a cigarette at Polly’s hand.  But the ukulele lay idle on his arm, and though the pine logs crackled in the huge fireplace he shivered and took note of the cold.

“It’s a good sign,” he said, unaware that the faintness of his voice drew the heads of his listeners closer.  “The cold weather will be a tonic.  It’s a hard job to work the tropics out of one’s blood.  But I’m beginning to shape up now for the Kuskokeem.  In the spring, Polly, we start with the dogs, and you’ll see the midnight sun.  How your mother would have liked the trip.  She was a game one.  Forty sleeps with the dogs, and we’ll be shaking out yellow nuggets from the moss-roots.  Larabee has some fine animals.  I know the breed.  They’re timber wolves, that’s what they are, big grey timber wolves, though they sport brown about one in a litter—­isn’t that right, Bennington?”