ance or
condition be neglected, Manikawan conscientiously looked after Shad's
welfare; but still she treated him with the same degree of dignity and
reserve, if not aloofness, that she had always maintained toward him.
He realised that what she did for him she did because he was the
friend of her beloved White Brother of the Snow, and not for his own
sake--as a dog will guard the thing which its master directs it to
guard, faithfully and untiringly, for the master's sake, but with no
other attachment for the thing itself.

He wondered why they did not return to their cache on the Great Lake
after the long storm, and then it occurred to him that probably their
destination was the trading post at Ungava, of which Bob had told him.

On the afternoon of the second day after the storm, they came upon a
single wigwam. Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn looked into it and passed
on. Shad raised the flap, and peering in saw the emaciated figure of
an old Indian. He was quite stark and dead, his wide-open eyes staring
vacantly into space. He had been abandoned to die.

That evening Shad stumbled over an object in the snow. He stooped to
examine it in the starlight, and was horrified to discover the dead
body of a woman.

The following morning, as they plodded wearily forward under the faint
light of the stars, they came suddenly upon a group of wigwams. Men,
women, and children came out to meet them--an emaciated, starved,
unkempt horde that had more the appearance of ghouls and skeletons
than human beings. Some of them tottered as they walked, some fell in
the snow and with difficulty regained their feet.

"Atuk! Atuk! Have you found the atuk?" was the cry from all--a
hopeless cry of desperation, as they crowded around the travellers.

"We have not found the atuk," answered Sishetakushin.

Some heard him stoically, others staggered hopelessly away to their
wigwams, others wailed:

"The Great Spirit of the Sky is angry. He has sent all the spirits to
destroy us. The Spirit of Hunger--the Gaunt Gray Wolf--is at our back.
The raven, the Black Spirit of Death, is ready to attack us. The
Spirit of the Tempest torments us. The Spirits of the Forest and of
the Barrens mock us. The Great Spirit of the Sky has driven away the
atuk, and our people are starving. Many of our people are dead. Four
of our hunters now lie dead in their lodges."

Shad Trowbridge could not understand what was said, but he could not
fail to understand the s