d, first by Hooniah, his mother, and then by his father, Bawn,
and was now whimpering and looking pessimistically out upon the world
from the shelter of the big overturned canoe on the beach.

And to make the matter worse, Scundoo, the shaman, was in disgrace,
and his known magic could not be called upon to seek out the
evil-doer. Forsooth, a month gone, he had promised a fair south wind
so that the tribe might journey to the _potlatch_ at Tonkin, where
Taku Jim was giving away the savings of twenty years; and when the day
came, lo, a grievous north wind blew, and of the first three canoes to
venture forth, one was swamped in the big seas, and two were pounded
to pieces on the rocks, and a child was drowned. He had pulled the
string of the wrong bag, he explained,--a mistake. But the people
refused to listen; the offerings of meat and fish and fur ceased to
come to his door; and he sulked within--so they thought, fasting in
bitter penance; in reality, eating generously from his well-stored
cache and meditating upon the fickleness of the mob.

The blankets of Hooniah were missing. They were good blankets, of most
marvellous thickness and warmth, and her pride in them was greatened
in that they had been come by so cheaply. Ty-Kwan, of the next village
but one, was a fool to have so easily parted with them. But then,
she did not know they were the blankets of the murdered Englishman,
because of whose take-off the United States cutter nosed along the
coast for a time, while its launches puffed and snorted among the
secret inlets. And not knowing that Ty-Kwan had disposed of them in
haste so that his own people might not have to render account to the
Government, Hooniah's pride was unshaken. And because the women envied
her, her pride was without end and boundless, till it filled the
village and spilled over along the Alaskan shore from Dutch Harbor to
St. Mary's. Her totem had become justly celebrated, and her name
known on the lips of men wherever men fished and feasted, what of the
blankets and their marvellous thickness and warmth. It was a most
mysterious happening, the manner of their going.

"I but stretched them up in the sun by the side-wall of the house,"
Hooniah disclaimed for the thousandth time to her Thlinget sisters. "I
but stretched them up and turned my back; for Di Ya, dough-thief
and eater of raw flour that he is, with head into the big iron pot,
overturned and stuck there, his legs waving like the branc