s that we're blind in the church at Togiak. Three days he'll
be goin', and on the fifth ye'll hear the jangle of Russian
dog-bells. He'll kill the fastest team in Nushagak in the comin',
and God help us if we're here."

George scraped a bit of frost-lace from the lone window pane. Dark
figures moved over the snow, circling the chapel, and he knew that
each was armed. Only their reverence for the church held them from
doing the task set by Orloff, and he sighed as he changed the
bandages on his suffering mate.

They awoke the next morning to the moan of wind and the sift of snow
clouds past their walls. Staring through his peep-hole, George
distinguished only a seethe of whirling flakes that greyed the view,
blotting even the neighbouring huts, and when the early evening
brought a rising note in the storm the trouble lifted from his face.

"A three-day blizzard," he rejoiced, "and the strongest team on the
coast can't wallow through it under a week. These on-shore gales is
beauts."

For three days the wind tore from off the sea into the open bight at
whose head lay Togiak, and its violence wrecked the armour of shore
ice in the bay till it beat and roared against the spit, a threshing
maelstrom of shattered bergs. The waters piled into the inlet driven
by the lash of the storm till they overflowed the river ice behind
the village, submerging and breaking it into ragged, dangerous
confusion.

On the third day, with Arctic vagary, the wind gasped reluctantly and
scurried over the range. In its wake the surging ocean churned
loudly and the back-water behind the town, held by the dam of
freezing slush-ice at the river mouth, was skimmed by a thin
ice-paper, pierced here and there by the up-ended piles from beneath.
This held the night's snow, so that morning showed the village girt
on three sides by a stream soft-carpeted and safe to the eye, but
failing beneath the feet of a child.

"You're eyes are comin' along mighty slow," worried George. "I'm
hopin' his reverence is up to his gills in drifts back yonder. "We
must leave him a sled trail for a souvenir."

"How can we, with the place guarded?"

"Hitch the dogs and run for it by night, He'll burn us out when he
comes. Fine targets we'd make on the snow by the light of a burning
shack. If ye can see to shoot we'll go tonight. Hello! What's
that?"

Outside came the howl of malamoots and the cry of men. Leaping to
the window, George rubbed it free a