A most satisfying adventure, so that Big Belt added many things to the matters which could not be related. The old mother had told him of her son (as they sat together in the little room she called home) and Boylan had seen in him a singular hero, and made the mother see it. Presently he strode to the shops and returned with many packages of food affairs, and a cart of fuel following. The prices which these things commanded in Sondreig appealed to him as a trifle; in fact, the of life on these direct terms of living first hand, struck him as the eternally right way.... Then she cooked for him, very intent and eager in the great joy of it, by his praise. In fact, he went to great lengths of breakfasting to show his ; until, perceiving what he had done, he strode forth again with understanding and restocked the cupboard by means of the cart.... Yes, he would come to-morrow.... Yes, by all means, while he was in Sondreig.  
Even if he had not thought of the white-fire creature being held in the room above the shop for his return, Boylan had found it necessary to leave the old mother, since she could not be made to eat with him there. She would have cooked for him until she fell by the fire, but as for her sharing the repast, she begged him to have peace, that time was for that.... He was thinking it all out once more, a most incident, as he walked swiftly through the snow toward the apothecary shop, when his shoulder was plucked by a , and he turned, a bit at the roughness of it. A black-bearded man of much rank peered into his face, crying out:
 
“Boylan, by the One God!”
 
“Herr Hartz—by the same!” Big Belt exclaimed.
 
And now they embraced—a affair, a spectacle of pounding, of disengagement, of renewed embrace—so that soldiers and hospital men circled wide in passing, and the little street was hushed with the exceeding joy.
 
“Come and live with me, Boylan. I will not take no for an answer. Come at once, and let us a table between us have, to prevent further inderrupption of travvic—”
 
At no time would the cause of this effusion have been made clear to an outsider, though it was plain that the American correspondent and the German officer of rank shared it alike. The truth: these two, and two others somewhere in the world, were the surviving four of a of over thirty men who had made up the original now known as the Schmedding Polar Failure. Colonel Hartz, detached from his command for service in the prison-hospital at Sondreig, was second in command here as he had been to Schmedding in that former ill-starred expedition.
 
The table was between them.
 
“But first,” said Boylan, “there is a little business in which you can help. My friend, Mowbray... is just coming back to life from Russian wounds. I could not leave............