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"Oh, dear, how I'd like to see ahis thin-spun tissue of optimism "These skin-clothes, all the ti, at all--! Oh, I never half appreciated things till they were all taken away!"

Stern, feeling that he had tapped the wrong vein, discreetly withdrew; and the sound of his calking-ha a certain irritation on the hull of the Adventure

One day he found a relic that seemed to stab hiap between his own life and that which he had left

Hunting in the forest, to ard of the bungalow, he caht, level Indian mound or earthwork; but in a moment his trained eye told hierness he hunted for some trace of the track; and when, buried under earth-mold and rubbish, he found soled pleasure and depression

"My God!" he exclaiht where I stand, countless thousands of hus once passed at trees long vanished andthis bank, where now the forest has been crowding for centuries? That all, all has perished--forever?

"It shall not be!" he cried hotly, and flung his hands out in passionate denial "All shall be thus again! All shall return--only far better! The world's death shall not, cannot be!"

Experiences such as these, leaving both of thely irritated and depressed as time went on, convinced Stern of the is still existed anywhere in the world, he and shelife itself Years of h a price to pay for the reward of coregariousness oftheh, a strange exultation filled theether they planned the last details of the trip

"Is the sail coht when they decided to visit Cae "You expect to have it done in a day or two?"

"I can finish it to- one edge with leather strips, it'll be ready for you"