“This is Captain Phipps and the North Pole,” he said. “I protest, Luvaine, ’twill be nothing to my mind to exchange your cursed stone for half-a-dozen of my toes.”
The soldier, the wind whizzing in his set teeth, muttered a word or two about the selfishness of uninterested parties; and that at last started the little baronet laughing—the first note of gaiety the expedition had produced.
“Oh!” he chirped, “what a noble sacrifice you would make of your friends”—and he kicked up his little hoofs and scampered like a colt.
Tuke, who was tailing in the rear, called to Dennis and fell somewhat behind with him.
“Is this necessary?” he said.
“Indeed, yes, sir.”
“She lives remote on these wild downs?”
“For nigh a year, sir, now.”
“With none to neighbour or assist her?”
“None. Deep in these wastes she bides, secret and alone, and not a soul within miles, did she need succour. It is her whim—her craze, sir, if you will. She hath led a strange, solitary life—for years apart from her fellows—for years hating the world so, that she would deign to draw but the meagrest sustenance from it.”