thoroughly to
justify their action, Nicholas resumed:

"You savvy, ol' father try white medicine--four winter, four summer. No
good. Ol' father say, 'Me well man? Good friend Holy Cross, good friend
Russian mission. Me ol'? me sick? Send for Shaman.'"

The entire company grunted in unison.

"You no tell?" Nicholas added with recurrent anxiety.

"No, no; they shan't hear through me. I'm safe."

Presently they all got up, and began removing and setting back the hewn
logs that formed the middle of the floor. It then appeared that,
underneath, was an excavation about two feet deep. In the centre,
within a circle of stones, were the charred remains of a fire, and here
they proceeded to make another.

As soon as it began to blaze, Yagorsha the Story-teller took the cover
off the smoke-hole, so the company was not quite stifled.

A further diversion was created by several women crawling in, bringing
food for the men-folk, in old lard-cans or native wooden kantaks. These
vessels they deposited by the fire, and with an exchange of grunts went
out as they had come.

Nicholas wouldn't let the Boy undo his pack.

"No, we come back," he said, adding something in his own tongue to the
company, and then crawled out, followed by the Boy. Their progress was
slow, for the Boy's "Canadian webfeet" had been left in the Kachime,
and he sank in the snow at every step. Twice in the dusk he stumbled
over an ighloo, or a sled, or some sign of humanity, and asked of the
now silent, preoccupied Nicholas, "Who lives here?" The answer had
been, "Nobody; all dead."

The Boy was glad to see approaching, at last, a human figure. It came
shambling through the snow, with bent head and swaying, jerking gait,
looked up suddenly and sheered off, flitting uncertainly onward, in the
dim light, like a frightened ghost.

"Who is that?"

"Shaman. Him see in dark all same owl. Him know you white man."

The Boy stared after him. The bent figure of the Shaman looked like a
huge bat flying low, hovering, disappearing into the night.

"Those your dogs howling?" the visitor asked, thinking that for sheer
dismalness Pymeut would be hard to beat.

Nicholas stopped suddenly and dropped down; the ground seemed to open
and swallow him. The Boy stooped and saw his friend's feet disappearing
in a hole. He seized one of them. "Hold on; wait for me!"

Nicholas kicked, but to no purpose; he could make only such progress as
his guest permitted.

Presently