A good deal can be said in five minutes.

dining-room.

She went back to the Penelope had vanished under the rug. "Penelope!"

At her voice the scared face and roughened hair emerged. Penelope flushed, "I-I thought just a minute I was in the box-room"-her eyes looked up appealingly into Helen's face.

"Never again, dear," Helen said firmly, "I am going to take you away with me"

She was interrupted by a sudden surprising disappearance of the sedateness she had thought part and parcel of her small niece. Penelope flung herself upon her with a choking cry, "With you with you?”

"Yes, dear, for always," said Helen gently.

"To-to live?" Penelope's voice was beyond her control, it shrilled out in quavering excitement. But habit was strong; she looked round anxiously, “I -didn't mean to make such a noise," she said apologetically.

"When you are with me, Penelope, you shall make as much noise as you like," said Helen recklessly.

Helen never did things by halves. It was one of her attributes that Sir Ralph Bennington dearly loved.

Penelope gasped. Then her arms squeezed Helen's throat spasmodically. "I-I'll sweep your room," she burst out, the eagerness of her longing to give something in return almost choking her voice. "I'll dig up the weeds! I'll do your dresses what do up at the back! I'll—I'll" her imagination failed her, she halted.

for awhile.

Helen went to a side table and found note paper and ink.

"P'raps," said Penelope nervously, "p'raps you don't know I are very stupid;" a scarlet flush crept over her small face.

"No," said Helen, "I don't believe it. Never mind if you are."

Penelope drew a big breath. Almost as she drew it she was overcome with sleep.

Then Helen hurried to the kitchen. "When does the last post go?" she asked.

"Seven twenty, Miss, from the orfice."

Helen glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Five minutes past seven. She ran back to the dining-room and dashed off a note.

She addressed it, and then putting on her hat as she went, took it to the post-office herself. She caught the last post with a minute and a half to spare. That night Penelope slept in a warm bed close beside Helen.

And the little calf who had been the cause of it all slept in a warm barn close beside his mother. Perhaps, after all, he ought not to have been punished. For if he had not enticed Penelope from the path of duty-but then we are told that we must not do evil that good may come. Maybe, though, the laws are different in calf-land. Any

"Oh!"

Penelope had an imagination. The wonders which the idea of unlimited

let it rest at that.

The next morning Haywold was electrified by the arrival of a telegram from London. Helen re

The collapse of Mr. Baldwin's expedition by Franz Josef Land and the return of Commander Peary and Captain Sverdrup from their abortive attempts to reach the Pole from the American side may make it interesting to give a brief account of the various efforts that have been made to push northwards towards this goal during the last 400 years. Mr. Baldwin's richly-equipped expedition was frankly stated to have as its almost sole object a dash at the Pole, and although both the expeditions of Commander Peary and Captain Sverdrup had other and more substantial objects in view, still, in each case, these were to be combined with an attempt to pass all previous records in this direction.

During the latter half of the 16th century and the early years of the 17th, when so many stages of the long journey to the North Pole were covered, great progress was made in that section of the north polar area which lies to the north of Europe and includes the extensive land masses of Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen. Sir Hugh Willoughby, in the Bona Esperanza, 120 tons, Richard Chancellor, in the Edward Bonaventure, 160 tons, and Cornelius Durfourth, in the Bona

Confidentia, 90 tons, first led the way in 1553. The first two vessels reached Kolguev Island, or as some claim even the south-western shore of Novaya Zemlya in about 72° N. latitude; but the extent of the voyage is uncertain, as in the following winter all on board, numbering some 62 souls, miserably perished of cold and hunger. There is no doubt however, that Stephen Burrough in the Searchthrift pinnace reached 70° 20 min. N. latitude in 1556 and sighted the coast of Novaya Zemlya. The next great step northwards in this direction was made by the Dutch mariner, William Barents. Sent by the merchants of Amsterdam in the Mercury, 100 tons, to discover a passage to China round the north of the island, he sighted on July 4, 1594, the west coast of Novaya Zemlya in 73° 25 min. N. latitude. Continuing his journey, he passed the northern limit of the island, finally reaching Orange Island north of the 77th parallel. Two years later another stage in the direction of the Pole was covered. A Dutch expedition comprising two vessels, Barents being chief pilot of the one and Cornelius Ryp in command of the other, sailed north past Bear Island to Spitzbergen, and in following its shores, then ex

plored for the first time, reached a latitude of close on 80° N. Even this high northing was surpassed, however, by Henry Hudson in 1607, who, in a little vessel of 80 tons, the Hopewell, followed the Spitzbergen coast to a point by dead reckoning 81° N. Land was stated to have been seen as far north as 82°, but either the reckoning must have been erroneous or ice must have been mistaken for land. In 1612, however, Jonas Poole met at Spitzbergen Thomas Marmaduke, of Hull in the Hopewell, who, Poole states, sailed as far north as 82°, two degrees beyond Hakluyt's Headland. If this statement is well founded, no further advance towards the Pole was made in this or any other direction-that is, no well-authenticated advance-for considerably over 200 years. But if Marmaduke's claim is allowed, SO must be the claims of the Dutch and other whalers, large numbers of whom for many long years thought nothing of passing 80° N. latitude, and in favorable seasons may possibly have reached a degree or two higher. Confining our attention, however, to authenticated records, and remembering that the highest northing calculated from observations that was reached by Hudson was 80° 23 min., we may mention in this brief record of the stages passed in the journey northwards, the expedition sent out by the Admiralty in 1773 under Captain J. C. Phipps (afterward Lord Mulgrave). Phipps reached 80° 48 min. N. latitude off the northwest coast of Spitzbergen. It is interesting to note that this was the polar expedition on which Nelson served. A more marked advance was made in 1806, when the famous whaler, William Scoresby, was able to advance good proof that he had reached 81° 30 min. N. latitude in the Spitzbergen Sea. But it was reserved for Lieutenant W. E. Parry far to outdistance all his predecessors in the work of north

polar exploration. Parry set sail in the Hecla in 1827, and making Trureaberg Bay, on the north coast of Spitzbergen, his base of operations, started northwards with two boats, which were fitted with steel-shod runners so that they might serve as sledges. In spite of the toilsome nature of the journey, he and his men pushed over the ice, piled with great blocks and bristling with splinters which pierced through boots and feet, to latitude 82° 45 min. N. Then it was found that the southerly drift of the ice practically counterbalanced the progress made during the onward march, and the expedition was compelled to turn back. Before Dr. Nansen's ever-memorable expedition, Parry's was the highest northing attained in the Eastern Hemisphere. But it may be noted that the Austrian Lieutenant Julius Payer, who, in conjunction with Lieutenant Carl Weyprecht, discovered Franz Josef Land in 1873, reached in the following year the highest point on land yet attained in the Eastern Hemisphere, in 82° 05 min. N. lat. Neither Mr. Jackson, Mr. Wellman nor Mr. Baldwin established a record. Dr. Nansen's famous journey in 189396, on which the explorer made so great a stride towards the Pole, is still fresh in the minds of all. Here we will only recall that the Fram, after entering the ice near the New Siberian Islands, touched the 86th parallel in the course of her long drift westwards, while Dr. Nansen himself and Lieutenant Johansen, having left the ship in 84° N., finally reached (at least) 86° 5 min., N., in longitude roughly 90° E. Two years ago this record was surpassed by Captain Cagni, of the Duke of the Abruzzi's expedition, who reached 86° 33 min., N. latitude, the highest northing yet attained in either the Eastern or the Western Hemisphere.

Hitherto the passage north through Behring Strait has not led any travel

ler to very high latitudes. Behring himself discovered neither the strait nor the sea that bear his name. His utmost northing was 67° 18 min., attained on his first expedition in 1728. Exactly 50 years later Captain James Cook, the great navigator, reached 70° 44 min. north, and in 1826 another British naval officer, Captain F. W. Beechey, who had been told off to co-operate with Franklin in his researches on the mainland of North America, attained the latitude of 71° 08 min. N. Beechey's mate Elson, pushed 126 miles beyond Icy Cape to Point Barrow, in 74° 24 min. N. latitude. In 1849 Captain Kellet reached the first island to the north of Behring Strait, in 71° 18 min. N., and six years later Commander John Rodgers, of the United States Navy, surpassed Elson's latitude, his northing being 72° 05 min. But the highest latitude recorded in these seas was that attained by Commander G. W. De Long, of the United States navy, to the north of the Liakoff or New Siberian Islands. This group had first been reached from the north coast of Asia in 1770, by a Russian trader named Liakoff, and in 1823 Lieutenant P. F. Anjou, who since 1820 had been exploring among the islands in company with Lieutenant F. von Wrangell, had succeeded in getting as far north as 76° 36 min. De Long sailed through Behring Strait in the ill-fated Jeannette in 1879. The pack-ice was entered near Herald Island in 71° 35 min. N., and for two years the vessel drifted westwards and northwards. Wrangell Land, which De Long had thought was part of a continent, and on which he expected to winter, was passed in the summer of 1879; in June, 1881, Jeannette Island in 76° 47 min. N. latitude was reached; later in the same month Henrietta Island, in 77° 08 min. N. was passed, and then the Jeannette was crushed in the ice. The survivors

drifted north to 77° 36 min., the highest northing yet attained in those seas. How at last the north coast of Asia was reached, and how all but Chief Engineer Melville and 11 of the crew perished, does not here concern us.

Only a slightly, if at all, higher latitude than that reached by De Long has been attained by travellers following the coast of Greenland. Hudson sighted this coast in 1607, in about latitude 73° north, and, according to the old Dutch chart of Gerrit van Keulen, as high latitudes were attained during the course of the 17th century as have ever since been reached in this direction. In 1654 Gale Hamke found land in 74° 30 min.; in 1670 Lambert touched 78° 30 min. So difficult is the East Greenland coast of approach, however, and so little was known about it in the early years of last century, that the famous whaler Captain William Scoresby, son of him whose northing off the coast of Spitzbergen we have already recorded, may well be said to have advanced a stage towards the Pole in this direction when in 1822 he surveyed and charted the coast comprised between latitude 73° 30 min. north and latitude 75° north. In the following year Captain Clavering, assisting Captain Edward Sabine, in his great pendulum work, reached Shannon Island in 75° 12 min north, and saw the coast stretching as far as the 76th parallel. No higher northing was made until the second German North Polar Expedition visited the coast in 1869. After wintering on Pendulum Island, Koldewey and Payer followed the shore northwards in sledges, and in April, 1870, reached the extreme northing along the East Greenland coastif we except that with which Lambert is credited on the old Dutch chart -of 77° 01 min. The stretch of coast between this and Peary's furthest on the north coast of Greenland still re

mains uncharted, though both Peary and Sverdrup professed to have its survey in view as one of their objects. None of these latitudes can compare with those attained by way of the Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Land routes. Indeed, the only route which may be said to rival these latter in the facilities it affords for approaching the Pole is that which runs between the west coast of Greenland and the vast land masses lying to the north of North America. In this direction the first stages of the long journey towards the Pole were covered by the expeditions which began to be despatched towards the close of the fifteenth century in search of a North-West Passage. Leaving out of account the two uncertain records connected with the names of the two Cabots, as well as the unfortunate enterprise of Frobisher, we come to the brave John Davis, who made a great stride northwards. After twice barely crossing the Arctic circle, in 1585 and 1586, he set out a third time, in 1587, from Dartmouth. The expedition comprised three small vessels, the two larger of which were left near Gilbert Sound, while Davis pushed ahead in the third, a mere pinnace. On June 24 he reached 67° 40 min. N. latitude, and saw many whales, and on the 28th attained his highest northing, 72° 12 min., where he found the bold promontory which he named Cape Hope Sanderson. Hudson, of course, was far to the south of this in Hudson's Bay, and it was reserved for William Baffin to reach what was, for more than two centuries the most northerly point attained by this route. Robert Bylot, master, and William Baffin, pilot, set out from Gravesend in 1616, with 15 men on board the Discovery, 55 tons. Proceeding along the west coast of Greenland, they reached Cape Hope Sanderson on May 30. As they continued north, Women's Island was found and named

in 72° 45 min. In 73° 45 min. the expedition was detained for a short time among the natives of Horn Sound, but the ice broke up, and on July 1 an open sea lay before the travellers in 75° 40 min. N. Pushing across this, the expedition reached the entrance to what was named Sir Thomas Smith's Sound, and an extreme northing of 77° 45 min. was recorded.

When one takes into account all the attendant circumstances, this was really a most remarkable voyage, but, notwithstanding the success which attended it, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay were so neglected by explorers for the next two hundred years that when interest in this section of the north polar field revived, early in the nineteenth century, the narrative of Baffin's discoveries was quite discredited. The accuracy of his observations was soon confirmed, but not until 1852-unless it may have been some whaler-did any one push our knowledge of the Arctic regions in this direction a stage nearer the Pole. In that year Captain E. A. Inglefield, in the Isabel, coupled with a summer search for Franklin an attempt to ascertain whether Smith Sound was connected with the Polar Sea. On August 26 the expedition reached Cape Alexander, the most northerly point seen by Baffin, and Inglefield saw the open sea, "stretching through seven points of the compass." He started to steam northwards, but 12 hours later, when only 40 miles beyond Baffin's furthest, was turned back by the ice. His extreme northing was 78° 21 min. In the following year the Americans took the field. Elisha Kent Kane, in a vessel fitted out by Grinnell and Peabody. straightway broke the new record, and reached and wintered in Rensselaer Harbor, 78° 37 min. N. In the summer of 1854 the surgeon of the expedition, Isaac I. Hayes, crossed Kane Sea to Grinnell Land, which he traced to