damn trap up!"

"What's that got to do with it?" said the Boy guiltily.

"Kaviak knew it ought to be catchin' fish. When I came down he was
cryin' and pullin' the trap backwards towards the hole. Then he
slipped."

"Come, Mac," said the Colonel quietly, "let's carry the little man to
the cabin."

"No, no, not yet; stuffy heat isn't what he wants;" and he worked on.

They got Potts up on his feet.

"I called out to you fellers. Didn't you hear me?"

"Y-yes, but we didn't understand."

"Well, you'd better have come. It's too late now." O'Flynn half
dragged, half carried him up to the cabin, for he seemed unable to walk
in his frozen trousers. The Colonel and the Boy by a common impulse
went a little way in the opposite direction across the ice.

"What can we do, Colonel?"

"Nothing. It's not a bit o' use." They turned to go back.

"Well, the duckin' will be good for Potts' parki, anyhow," said the Boy
in an angry and unsteady voice.

"What do you mean?"

"When he asked me to hand it to him I nearly stuck fast to it. It's all
over syrup; and we don't wear furs at our meals."

"Tchah!" The Colonel stopped with a face of loathing.

"Yes, he was the only one of us that didn't bully the kid to-day."

"Couldn't go _that_ far, but couldn't own up."

"Potts is a cur."

"Yes, sah." Then, after an instant's reflection: "But he's a cur that
can risk his life to save a kid he don't care a damn for."

They went back to Mac, and found him pretty well worn out. The Colonel
took his place, but was soon pushed away. Mac understood better, he
said; had once brought a chap round that everybody said was ... dead.
He wasn't dead. The great thing was not to give in.

A few minutes after, Kaviak's eyelids fluttered, and came down over the
upturned eyeballs. Mac, with a cry that brought a lump to the Colonel's
throat, gathered the child up in his arms and ran with him up the hill
to the cabin.

* * * * *

Three hours later, when they were all sitting round the fire, Kaviak
dosed, and warm, and asleep in the lower bunk, the door opened, and in
walked a white man followed by an Indian.

"I'm George Benham." They had all heard of the Anvik trader, a man of
some wealth and influence, and they made him welcome.

The Indian was his guide, he said, and he had a team outside of seven
dogs. He was going to the steamship _Oklahoma_ on some business, and
promised Father Wills of Holy Cross that