xt day he comes again and stays longer, and the next, and the next,
and every day longer and longer, until at last he moves above them in
one great, bright circle, and does not even go away at all at night.
His warm rays melt the snow and awaken the few little hardy flowers
that can grow in this short summer. The icy coat breaks away from the
clear running water, and great flocks of birds with soft white plumage
come, like a snowstorm of great feathery flakes, and settle among the
black rocks along the seashore. Here they lay their eggs in the many
safe little corners and shelves of the rock; and here they circle
about in the sunshine, while the Esquimau boys make ready their
long-handled nets and creep and climb out upon the ledges of rock,
and, holding up the net as the birds fly by, catch a netful to carry
home for supper.

The sun shines all day long, and all night long, too; and yet he
can't melt all the highest snowdrifts, where the boys are playing
bat-and-ball,--long bones for sticks, and an odd little round one for
a ball.

It is a merry life they all live while the sunshine stays, for they
know the long, dark winter is coming, when they can no longer climb
among the birds, nor play ball among the drifts.

The seals swim by in the clear water, and the walrus and her young one
are at play; and, best of all, the good reindeer has come, for the sun
has uncovered the crisp moss upon which he feeds, and he is roaming
through the valleys where it grows among the rocks.

The old men sit on the rocks in the sunshine, and laugh and sing, and
tell long stories of the whale and the seal, and the great white
whale that, many years ago, when Agoonack's father was a child, came
swimming down from the far north, where they look for the northern
lights, swimming and diving through the broken ice; and they watched
her in wonder, and no one would throw a harpoon at this white lady of
the Greenland seas, for her visit was a good omen, promising a mild
winter.

Little Agoonack comes from her play to crouch among the rocky ledges
and listen to the stories. She has no books; and, if she had, she
couldn't read them. Neither could her father or mother read to her:
their stories are told and sung, but never written. But she is
a cheerful and contented little girl, and tries to help her dear
friends; and sometimes she wonders a great while by herself about what
the pale stranger told them.

And now, day by day, the sun is slippi