“Beg pardon,” said the stranger in a smothered voice, walking as though he were ice to the marrow and afraid of breaking himself.  “It’s so beastly cold that I have taken the liberty of dropping in to get warm.”

“It is cold—­beastly cold,” replied Philip, emphasizing the word.  “It was down to sixty last night.  Take off your things.”

“Devil of a country—­this,” shivered the man, unbuttoning his coat.  “I’d rather roast of the fever than freeze to death.”  Philip limped forward to assist him, and the stranger eyed him sharply for a moment.

“Limp not natural,” he said quickly, his voice freeing itself at last from the depths of his coat collar.  “Bandage a little red, eyes feverish, lips too pale.  Sick, or hurt?”

Philip laughed as the little man hopped to the stove and began rubbing his hands.

“Hurt,” he said.  “If you weren’t four hundred miles from nowhere I’d say that you were a doctor.”

“So I am,” said the other.  “Edward Wallace Boffin, M.D., 900 North Wabash Avenue, Chicago.”

Chapter XIII.  The Great Love Experiment

For a full half minute after the other’s words Philip stared in astonishment.  Then, with a joyful shout, he suddenly reached out his hand across the stove.

“By thunder,” he cried, “you’re from home!”

“Home!” exclaimed the other.  There was a startled note in his voice.  “You’re—­you’re a Chicago man?” he asked, staring strangely at Philip and gripping his hand at the same time.

“Ever hear of Steele—­Philip Egbert Steele?  I’m his son.”

“Good Heavens!” drawled the doctor, gazing still harder at him and pinching the ice from his beard, “what are you doing up here?”

“Prodigal son,” grinned Philip.  “Waiting for the calf to get good and fat.  What are you doing?”

“Making a fool of myself,” replied the doctor, looking at the top of the stove and rubbing his hands until his fingers snapped.

At the North Pole, if they had met there, Philip would have known him for a professional man.  His heavy woolen suit was tailor made.  He wore a collar and a fashionable tie.  A lodge signet dangled at his watch chain.  He was clean-shaven and his blond Van Dyke beard was immaculately trimmed.  Everything about him, from the top of his head to the bottom of his laced boots, shouted profession, even in the Arctic snow.  He might have gone farther and guessed that he was a physician—­a surgeon, perhaps—­from his hands, and from the supple manner in which he twisted his long white fingers about one another over the stove.  He was a man of about forty, with a thin sensitive face, strong rather than handsome, and remarkable eyes.  They were not large, nor far apart, but were like twin dynamos, reflecting the life of the man within.  They were the sort of eyes which Philip had always associated with great mental power.