after a reasonable time, be sought out and dispatched,
if she had not in the meantime perished.

The feeble old woman heard it all with outward stoic indifference. It
was a part of her religion and she probably thought the punishment
quite just, and whatever shrinking of spirit she felt, she hid it
heroically from the others. To have been killed immediately would have
been more humane than banishment, for the latter only meant a slower
but just as sure a death, from exposure and starvation.

To Bob, who had listened intently and was able to grasp the situation
in a general way, it seemed heartless in the extreme; but his protests
would not only have been powerless to move the Eskimos from their
purpose, but in all probability would have worked harm for himself and
to no avail. These people that at first had seemed so amiable and
hospitable, and almost childlike in their nature, had been by their
heathen superstitions suddenly transformed into cruel, unsympathetic
savages.

"Oh," thought Bob, "if I had but heeded Sishetakushin's warning!"

But it was too late now to repent of the course he had taken and he
had only to abide by it. It seemed to him that his own life hung by a
mere thread and that at any moment some fancy might strike them to
sacrifice him too. He had indeed but barely escaped Chealuk's fate,
and the next time he might not be so fortunate.

In this disturbed state of mind he withdrew from the igloos and
climbed the hill, where he stood and gazed longingly at the mainland
hills to the southward, wondering where, beyond those cold, white
ranges, lay Wolf Bight and his little cabin home, warm and clean and
tidy, and whether his mother and father and Emily thought him safe or
had heard of his disappearance and were mourning him as dead. And here
he was far, far away in the north and hopelessly--apparently--stranded
upon a desolate island from which he would probably never escape and
never see them again.

Oh, how lonely and disconsolate he felt. Every day since he left home
he had prayed God to keep the loved ones safe and to take him back to
them.

"I hopes they're safe an' Emily's better, but th' Lard's been losin'
track o' me," he said to himself with a wavering faith.

"But th' Lard took me safe t' Ungava, an' He must be watchin' me," he
exclaimed after further thought. "An' He's been rare good t' me."

Then like a bulwark to lean against there came to him the words of his
mother as they parted