“They’re probably all dead by now, Bridie.”

“You ain’t, anyway.”

“It’s an idea. As you say, they might be glad to see me.”

“Oh, no use talking to you. You and Czar both. Stiff in the mind as you are in the joints, both of you. Why’n’t you stay elastic like me!” She was off, with a jerk at her new spring hat. Now she turned for a parting question. “What’s in that big tin box in your cabin? You got your money or bonds or whatever laying around on the floor like an old miser, when there’s banks in plenty in Baranof? I tried to open it, but it’s locked.”

He laughed then, throwing back his fine old head in a roar of amusement such as she had not heard from him in years. “Bridie, Bridie, we should have married those years and years ago, I’d have been as successful as Czar and Dave Husack combined, and you’d have been Queen of Alaska.”

“Maybe I am now, there are folks that think … What’s in that box, Thor Storm?”

“It’s my book.”

“Finished! You mean the book you’ve been writing on all these years! Finished!”

“No book is ever really finished, I suppose. If you care enough about what you’re writing—or too much—you keep picking at it and picking at it, trying to write better than you can. But now I think I won’t try any more to make it perfect. I’ve said what I had to say as best I could.”

“You don’t sound any too gay about it. My land! About fifty years writing it, first and last.”

“Yes. There’s a little note of explanation in the front of it. I want Chris to read it someday soon. I want Chris to be the first to read it.”

Regretfully, Christine bade him good-bye and went off for the first Outside trip she had had since her return to Baranof following the abruptly terminated Seattle experience.

“I’ll be away four weeks, but if I don’t like it I’ll just come home.”

“Don’t do that. Finish what you start.”

“Grampa Thor, I wish you’d live in my house while I’m away. You’d be so comfortable. Won’t you? If only to keep the mice away.”

“An old fellow like me wants to stay in his own lair, like the woods’ creatures.… Christine?”

“Yes, Grampa.”

“One thing I wish you’d do. I’ve meant to talk to you about it before now. You never finished your college education. You never got your degree, after that bad time Outside, when you left and came back home. I wish you’d go back to Baranof College for one year and get your degree. Cap and gown, and you standing there with the rolled sheepskin as they call it, in your hand. You began it. Finish it.”

“What a strange idea! I’ve got a job. But I’ll think about it.”

“It’s going to be kind of restful, both you and Bridie gone. Nobody to nag me about food and temper and my howling editorials and my bad behavior.”