put
across these, and other logs and moss and mud roofed over it, leaving an
opening in the middle about two feet square. This is covered with a piece
of walrus entrail so thin and transparent that light easily passes
through it, and it serves as a window, the only one they have. A
smoke-hole is cut through the roof, but there is no door, for the hut is
entered through another room built in the same way, fifteen or twenty
feet distant, and connected by an underground passage about two feet
square with the main room. The entrance-room is entered through a hole in
the roof, from which a ladder reaches the bottom of the passage."

"Can we go into a hut?" asked Ted.

"I'll ask that woman cooking over there," said Mr. Strong, as they went
up to a woman who was cooking over a peat fire, holding over the coals an
old battered skillet in which she was frying fish. She nodded and smiled
at the boys, and, as Esquimos are always friendly and hospitable souls,
told them to go right into her _iglu_, which was close by.

They climbed down the ladder, crawled along the narrow passage to where a
skin hung before an opening, and, pushing it aside, entered the
living-room. Here they found an old man busily engaged in carving a
walrus tooth, another sewing _mukluks_, while a girl was singing a quaint
lullaby to a child of two in the corner.

The young girl rose, and, putting the baby down on a pile of skins, spoke
to them in good English, saying quietly:

"You are welcome. I am Alalik."

"May we see your wares? We wish to buy," said Mr. Strong, courteously.
"You may see, whether you buy or not," she said, with a smile, which
showed a mouth full of even white teeth, and she spread out before them
a collection of Esquimo goods. There were all kinds of carvings from
walrus tusks, grass baskets, moccasins of walrus hide, stone bowls and
cups, _parkas_ made of reindeer skin, and one superb one of bird
feathers, _ramleikas_, and all manner of carved trinkets, the most
charming of which, to Ted's eyes, being a tiny _oomiak_ with an Esquimo
in it, made to be used as a breast-pin. This he bought for his mother,
and a carving of a baby for Judith; while his father made him and
Kalitan happy with presents.

"Where did you learn such English?" asked Mr. Strong of Alalik,
wondering, too, where she learned her pretty, modest ways, for Esquimo
women are commonly free and easy.

"I was for two years at the Mission at Holy Cross," she said. "Ther