w." "Never!"

"Sh!" she made him a sign to be quiet. The rambling fever-talk went on,
Nicholas listening fascinated. "No Pymeut," she whispered, "like live
in ighloo any more if man die there."

"You mean, if they know a person's dying they haul him out o'
doors--and _leave_ him a night like this?"

"If not, how get him out ... after?"

"Why, carry him out."

"_Touch_ him? Touch _dead_ man?" She shuddered. "Oh, no. Bad, bad! I no
think he die," she resumed, raising her voice. But Nicholas rejoined
them, silent, looking very grave. Was he contemplating turning the poor
old fellow out? The Boy sat devising schemes to prevent the barbarism
should it come to that. The wind had risen; it was evidently going to
be a rough night.

With imagination full of sick people turned out to perish, the Boy
started up as a long wail came, muffled, but keen still with anguish,
down through the snow and the earth, by way of the smoke-hole, into the
dim little room.

"Oh, Nicholas! what was that?"

"What?"

"Wait! Listen! There, that! Why, it's a child crying."

"No, him Chee."

"Let's go and bring him in."

"Bring dog in here?"

"Dog! That's no dog."

"Yes, him dog; him my Chee."

"Making a human noise like that?"

Nicholas nodded. The only sounds for some time were the doleful
lamenting of the Mahlemeut without, and the ravings of the Pymeut Chief
within.

The Boy was conscious of a queer, dream-like feeling. All this had been
going on up here for ages. It had been like this when Columbus came
over the sea. All the world had changed since then, except the
steadfast North. The Boy sat up suddenly, and rubbed his eyes. With
that faculty on the part of the unlearned that one is tempted to call
"American," a faculty for assimilating the grave conclusions of the
doctors, and importing them light-heartedly into personal experience,
he realised that what met his eyes here in Nicholas' house was one of
the oldest pictures humanity has presented. This was what was going on
by the Yukon, when King John, beside that other river, was yielding
Magna Charta to the barons. While the Caesars were building Rome the
Pymeut forefathers were building just such ighloos as this. While
Pheidias wrought his marbles, the men up here carved walrus-ivory, and,
in lieu of Homer, recited "The Crow's Last Flight" and "The Legend of
the Northern Lights."

Nicholas had risen again, his mouth set hard, his small hands shaking.
He unrolled an ol