s,
was throwing down some frozen seal meat from the scaffold for his
hungry dogs after their long day's hauling. Malcolm was only eighteen,
and in winter still lived with his father in their home below the
falls of Pike's River. However, now that he had been away for two
summers in his uncle's schooner fishing "down North," his eyes were
already turned to some long-untenanted fjords in the mouths of which
the craft had anchored.

Pike's Falls was a lonely place, and the sound of a human voice
calling to a dog team kept Malcolm standing with a fine forkful of
meat in his hands long enough so greatly to tantalize the team below
as to start a serious fight. This woke him from his reverie. "Ah, Ah!"
he shouted, and, jumping down right into the middle of the fracas,
soon had his dogs busy again with the frozen blocks which constituted
their food for the day.

"Is that you, Mr. Norman?" he exclaimed heartily. "Why, who would ever
have thought of seeing you here, and alone, this evening of all days
in t' year?"--as a middle-aged man jumped from an empty sledge and
began unharnessing a half-starved-looking team. "Shall I give you a
hand? They seem spun out."

"Better not touch 'em, I reckon," was the gruff answer. "They're a bit
surly with strangers." And indeed already the animals were snarling
and showing their teeth at the other dogs finishing their meal near
by.

Malcolm, who at once proceeded to throw down a liberal allowance of
seal meat for the newcomers' suppers, attributed the savage way in
which their master whipped off his host's team from trying to get a
second helping, to the weariness of a long journey. For to beat
another man's dogs, especially with the long and heavy lash of our
Northern whips, is a breach of the unwritten law of the Labrador.

It was not until he had shared the steaming supper prepared for
Malcolm that the strings of the visitor's tongue began to be unloosed.
For it is not etiquette to ask a stranger's reasons for visiting a
well-stocked house, in a country where the komatik trail is the only
resource for the destitute.

"It's to t' post I'm bound. We be short of grub south. T' fishery have
been bad this three years, and there's six of us now," he began.
"There wasn't more than a couple of bakings of flour in t' barrel when
I left. I couldn't get no credit south at Deep-Water Creek; and so I
just had to try north or starve."

"'T is a long bit yet to t' post," replied Malcolm. "There