p warm." Down on the floor
went the saucepan. The child was caught away from the surprised Mac,
and the furs so closely gathered round the small shrunken body that
there was once more nothing visible but the wistful yellow face and
gleaming eyes, still turned searchingly on its most recent
acquaintance.

But the priest, without so much as a glance at the new-comer, proceeded
to feed Kaviak out of the saucepan, blowing vigorously at each spoonful
before administering.

"He's pretty hungry," commented Mac. "Where'd you find him?"

"In a little village up on the Kuskoquim. Kaviak's an Esquimaux from
Norton Sound, aren't you, Kaviak?" But the child was wholly absorbed,
it seemed, in swallowing and staring at Mac. "His family came up there
from the coast in a bidarra only last summer--all dead now. Everybody
else in the village--and there isn't but a handful--all ailing and all
hungry. I was tramping across an igloo there a couple of days ago, and
I heard a strange little muffled sound, more like a snared rabbit than
anything else. But the Indian with me said no, everybody who had lived
there was dead, and he was for hurrying on. They're superstitious, you
know, about a place where people have died. But I crawled in, and found
this little thing lying in a bundle of rags with its hands bound and
dried grass stuffed in its mouth. It was too weak to stir or do more
than occasionally to make that muffled noise that I'd heard coming up
through the smoke-hole."

"What you goin' to do with him?"

"Well, I hardly know. The Sisters will look after him for a while, if I
get him there alive."

"Why shouldn't you?"

Kaviak supplied the answer straightway by choking and falling into an
appalling fit of coughing.

"I've got some stuff that'll be good for that," said Mac, thinking of
his medicine-chest. "I'll give you some when we get back to camp."

The priest nodded, taking Mac's unheard of civility as a matter of
course.

"The ice is very rough; the jolting makes him cough awfully."

The Jesuit had fastened his eyes on Mac's woollen muffler, which had
been loosened during the ministering to Kaviak and had dropped on the
ground. "Do you need that scarf?" he asked, as though he suspected Mac
of wearing it for show. "Because if you didn't you could wrap it round
Kaviak while I help the men strike camp." And without waiting to see
how his suggestion was received, he caught up the saucepan, lifted the
flap, and vanished.

"F