the pipe, etcetera, left behind, but nothing
would have induced him to return for these at that time.

Towards evening the walrus-hunters returned. They had been very
successful. The sledges were loaded up with the meat of several large
animals, so that there was a prospect of unlimited feasting for more
than a week to come.

"Now, old woman," said Cheenbuk with cheery irreverence to his mother,
and with that good-natured familiarity which is often engendered by good
fortune, "stir up the lamps and get ready the marrow-bones!"

Regardless of lamps and marrow-bones, all the children of the community,
even to the smallest babes, were sucking raw blubber as children in less
favoured lands suck lollipops.

"Had you to go far?" asked Adolay.

"Not far. We found them all close by, and would have been back sooner,
but some of them fought hard and took up much time," answered Cheenbuk,
who awaited the cooking process; for since he had discovered the Indian
girl's disgust at raw meat, he had become a total abstainer on the
point.

"And," he added, beginning to pull off his boots, "if your father had
not been there with the spouter we should have been out on the floes
fighting still, for some of the walruses were savage, and hard to kill."

After supper, as a matter of course, Nazinred looked round with an air
of benign satisfaction on his fine face.

"Is my fire-bag behind you, Adolay?" he asked in a low voice.

Doocheek was present and heard the question, but of course did not
understand it, as it was put in the Dogrib tongue. The search, however,
which immediately began induced him to retire promptly and absent
himself from home for the time being.

"It is not here, father."

A more careful search was made, then a most careful one, but no fire-bag
was to be found.

"Perhaps Nootka took it to her sleeping-place to keep it safe,"
suggested old Mangivik.

No; Nootka had seen nothing of it, and Nootka was not a little annoyed
when, in spite of her assertion, a search was made in her boudoir, and
not a little triumphant when the search proved fruitless.

"Surely no one has taken it away," said Cheenbuk, looking round with an
expression that would have sunk Doocheek through the snow into the earth
if he had been there.

"_If_ any one has taken it away," said Aglootook, with a profundity of
meaning in his tone that was meant to paralyse the guilty, and serve as
a permanent caution to the innocent, "_something_