th head
bowed forward, and bled slowly and continuously at the mouth; the
coughing sickness had gripped them. They were as dead men; their time
was short. It was a judgment of the dead.

"And I paid for her a heavy price," Porportuk concluded his complaint.
"Such a price you have never seen. Sell all that is yours--sell your
spears and arrows and rifles, sell your skins and furs, sell your tents
and boats and dogs, sell everything, and you will not have maybe a
thousand dollars. Yet did I pay for the woman, El-Soo, twenty-six times
the price of all your spears and arrows and rifles, your skins and furs,
your tents and boats and dogs. It was a heavy price."

The old men nodded gravely, though their weazened eye-slits widened with
wonder that any woman should be worth such a price. The one that bled at
the mouth wiped his lips. "Is it true talk?" he asked each of
Porportuk's six young men. And each answered that it was true.

"Is it true talk?" he asked El-Soo, and she answered, "It is true."

"But Porportuk has not told that he is an old man," Akoon said, "and that
he has daughters older than El-Soo."

"It is true, Porportuk is an old man," said El-Soo.

"It is for Porportuk to measure the strength his age," said he who bled
at the mouth. "We be old men. Behold! Age is never so old as youth
would measure it."

And the circle of old men champed their gums, and nodded approvingly, and
coughed.

"I told him that I would never be his wife," said El-Soo.

"Yet you took from him twenty-six times all that we possess?" asked a one-
eyed old man.

El-Soo was silent.

"It is true?" And his one eye burned and bored into her like a fiery
gimlet.

"It is true," she said.

"But I will run away again," she broke out passionately, a moment later.
"Always will I run away."

"That is for Porportuk to consider," said another of the old men. "It is
for us to consider the judgment."

"What price did you pay for her?" was demanded of Akoon.

"No price did I pay for her," he answered. "She was above price. I did
not measure her in gold-dust, nor in dogs, and tents, and furs."

The old men debated among themselves and mumbled in undertones. "These
old men are ice," Akoon said in English. "I will not listen to their
judgment, Porportuk. If you take El-Soo, I will surely kill you."

The old men ceased and regarded him suspiciously. "We do not know the
speech you make," one said.

"He but said that he wo