was a mere shadowy caricature of the Mookoomahn Bob had known.
The face was fleshless as that of a skeleton head, with the skin of
the former inhabitant stretched and dried upon the bones; the lips so
shrunken that they scarcely served to cover the two white lines of
teeth; the eyes deep fallen into gaping cavities below the frontal
bone.

Drawing his skeleton hands from their mittens, and raising them in an
imploring gesture, Mookoomahn looked, as he stood there in the dim
candlelight under the low log ceiling, more a spectre--a ghostly
phantom visitor--than a living human being.

Then he spoke in a voice low and broken:

"White Brother of the Snow, Mookoomahn has long been tormented by the
Spirit of Hunger. When he slept the Spirit of Starvation sat by his
side, never sleeping. When he travelled the Spirit of Starvation
stalked at his heels, never tiring. For many suns the Spirit of Death
has had his cold fingers on Mookoomahn's shoulder."

Gently Bob removed the caribou-skin coat from the starving and
exhausted traveller, and made him comfortable while the others brewed
tea and heated some cold boiled ptarmigan in the pan.

"'Twon't do t' give he much at first," cautioned Dick Blake, setting
before Mookoomahn a small portion of the meat and a small piece of
bread with a cup of the hot tea. "He's like t' be wonderful sick,
anyway, th' carefullest we is. We'll let he have a small bit at a
time, an' let he have un often."

No questions were asked until after the Indian had eaten. It seemed
almost that no questions were necessary. The man had come alone. He
was in the last stages of starvation. These facts spoke loudly enough.
They told the tale of wasting strength, of hopeless struggle, of
tragic death that had taken place in the bleak wild wastes above.

The food revived and the tea stimulated Mookoomahn, and when he spoke
again, in answer to Bob's urgent request that he tell them of the fate
of Shad and the others, his voice was stronger.

He described the journey to the Lake of Willows, and thence to the
camp of starving Indians. He told how the shaman had made medicine to
the spirits; how the spirits had revealed to the shaman the things
that it was required the Indians do; how the Indians in their starved
condition were not able to fulfil the requirements laid upon them by
the spirits; and how in consequence the wrath of the spirits was not
placated.

He described the journey to the cache on the northern