girls."
"Huh!" said the old chief, grimly. "Girls learn too much. They no good
for Indian wives, and white men not marry them. Best for girls to stay at
home at the will of their fathers until they get husbands."

"So you've been in Wrangel," said Ted to Kalitan. "We went there, too.
It's a dandy place. Do you remember the fringe of white mountains back of
the harbour? The people said the woods were full of game, but we didn't
have time to go hunting. There are a few shops there, but it seemed to me
a very small place to have been built since 1834. In the States whole
towns grow up in two or three weeks."

"Huh!" said Kalitan, with a quick shrug of his shoulders, "quick grow,
sun fade and wind blow down."

"I don't think the sun could ever fade in Wrangel," laughed Ted. "They
told me there it hadn't shone but fifteen days in three months. It rained
all the time."

"Rain is nothing," said Kalitan. "It is when the Ice Spirit speaks in the
North Wind's roar and in the crackling of the floes that we tremble. The
glaciers are the children of the Mountain Spirit whom our fathers
worshipped. He is angry, and lo! he hurls down icebergs in his wrath, he
tosses them about, upon the streams he tosses the _kyaks_ like feathers
and washes the land with the waves of Sitth. When our people are buried
in the ground instead of being burnt with the fire, they must go for ever
to the place of Sitth, of everlasting cold, where never sun abides, nor
rain, nor warmth."

Ted had listened spellbound to this poetic speech and gazed at Kalitan in
open-mouthed amazement. A boy who could talk like that was a new and
delightful playmate, and he said: "Tell me more about things, Kalitan,"
but the Indian was silent, ashamed of having spoken.

"What do you do all day when you are at home?" persisted the American.

"In winter there is nothing to do but to hunt and fish," said Kalitan.
"Sometimes we do not find much game, then we think of how, when a
Thlinkit dies, he has plenty. If he has lived as a good tribesman, his
kyak glides smoothly over the silver waters into the sunset, until, o'er
gently flowing currents, it reaches the place of the mighty forest. A bad
warrior's canoe passes dark whirlpools and terrible rapids until he
reaches the place we speak not of, where reigns Sitth.

"In the summer-time we still hunt and fish. Many have learned to till
the ground, and we gather berries and wood for the winter. The other
side of the inlet, the