e bear lying on the ice--his lance had pierced the
brute's heart. Attracted by the barking of Ootah's dogs, several
tribesmen soon joined him in dressing the animal. During their task,
one suddenly beckoned silence, and whispered softly:

"The Voice . . . the Voice . . ." And they paused.

A weird whistling sound sang eerily through the skies. The air,
electrified, seemed to snap and crackle. It was the voice that comes
with the aurora.

The knives fell from the natives' hands. The howling of the hungry
dogs was stilled. In hushed awe, in reverence, with vague wondering,
they listened. Ootah was on his knees. An inspired light transfigured
his face. His pulses thrilled. For what they heard was, to them all,
the Voice of the Great Unknown, He whose power is greater than that of
_Perdlugssuaq_, He who made the world, created the Eternal Maiden
_Sukh-eh-nukh_, and placed all the stars in the skies, who, never
coming Himself earthward, instead sends in the aurora His spirits with
messages of hope and encouragement to men, and Whose Voice sometimes,
far, far away, itself comes as the faintly remembered music of long
by-gone dreams preceding birth . . . Yea, it was the Voice . . . the
Voice . . .

And now, out of the black-blue sky, as if released from invisible
hands, great globes of swimming liquid fire floated constantly, and
dispersing into millions of feathery flakes of opal light, melted
softly . . . Along the lower heavens there was a fugitive flickering
of a rich creamy light, as of the reflection of celestial fires far
beyond the horizon.

Speechless, Ootah viewed the flameous wonder, and, although he knew no
prayer, he felt in his soul an instinctive love, a profound awe . . .
In the silent sanctity of that auroral-shot and frigidly glorious
region he seemed to feel the pulsing of an Unseen Presence--a presence
of which he was a part, of which, with a glow, he felt the soul of her
he loved was a part, to which all nature, everything that lives and
breathes, was vitally linked . . . He felt the drawing urge, the
thrilling tingling impetus, as it were, of the terrific currents of
vital spirit force that sweep vastly through the universe, keeping the
earth and all the planets in their orbits . . . He felt, what possibly
the primitive and pure of heart feel most keenly . . . the presence of
the Great Unknown, He who is the fountain source of love, and whose
hands on the sable parchment of the northe