d his pace.

"How did I miss you?" demanded Mac.

"Well," said the Boy, looking rather mischievous, "I can't think how it
happened on the way down, unless you passed when I 'd gone uphill a
piece after some tracks. I was lyin' under the Muff a few miles down
when you came back, and you--well, I kind o' thought you seemed to have
your hands full." Mac looked rigid and don't-you-try-to-chaff-me-sir.
"Besides," the Boy went on, "I couldn't cover the ground like you and
Father Wills."

"What's the matter with you?"

"Oh, nothin' to howl about. But see here, Mac."

"Well?"

"Soon's I can walk I'll go and get you the rest o' that elephant."

There was no more said till they got up to the others, who had waited
for the Indians to come back, and had unpacked Kaviak to spare him the
jolting uphill.

O'Flynn was screaming with excitement as he saw that the bundle
Nicholas was carrying had a head and two round eyes.

"The saints in glory be among us! What's that? Man alive, what _is_ it,
be the Siven?"

"That," answered Mac with a proprietary air, "is a little Esquimaux
boy, and I'm bringing him in to doctor his cold."

"Glory be! An Esquimer! And wid a cowld! Sure, he can have some o' my
linnyeemint. Well, y'arre a boss collector, Mac! Faith, ye bang the
Jews! And me thinkin' ye'd be satisfied wid yer elephunt. Not him, be
the Siven! It's an Esquimer he must have to finish off his collection,
wan wid the rale Arctic cowld in his head, and two eyes that goes
snappin' through ye like black torpeders. Two spissimens in wan day!
Yer growin' exthravagant, Mac. Why, musha, child, if I don't think yer
the dandy Spissimen o' the lot!"

CHAPTER IV

THE BLOW-OUT

"How good it is to invite men to the pleasant feast."

Comfortable as rock fireplace and stockade made the cabin now, the
Colonel had been feeling all that morning that the official
House-Warming was fore-doomed to failure. Nevertheless, as he was cook
that week, he could not bring himself to treat altogether lightly his
office of Master of the Feast. There would probably be no guests. Even
their own little company would likely be incomplete, but t here was to
be a spread that afternoon, "anyways."

Even had the Colonel needed any keeping up to the mark, the office
would have been cheerfully undertaken by O'Flynn or by Potts, for whom
interest in the gustatory aspect of the occasion was wholly undimmed by
the threatened absence of Mac and the "little