brious solemnity of his
visage.

"Mother," said Ippegoo, sitting down on a skin beside the pleasant
little woman, "it comes."

"What comes, my son?"

"I know not."

"If you know not, how do you know that it comes?" asked Kunelik, who was
slightly alarmed by the wild manner and unusual, almost dreadful,
gravity of her boy.

"It is useless to ask me, mother. I do not understand. My mind cannot
take it in, but--but--it comes."

"Yes; when is it coming?" asked Kunelik, who knew well how to humour
him.

"How can I tell? I--I think it has come _now_," said the youth, growing
paler, or rather greener; "I think I feel it in my breast. Ujarak said
the torngak would come to-day, and to-night I am to _be--changed_!"

"Oho!" exclaimed Kunelik, with a slight touch of asperity, "it's a
torngak that is to come, is it? and Ujarak says so? Don't you know,
Ippe, that Ujarak is an idiot!"

"Mother!" exclaimed the youth remonstratively, "Ujarak an idiot?
Impossible! He is to make me an angekok to-night."

"You, Ippe! You are not more fit for an angekok than I am for a
seal-hunter."

"Yes, true; but I am to _be--changed_!" returned the youth, with a
bright look; then remembering that his _role_ was solemnity, he dropped
the corners of his mouth, elongated his visage, turned up his eyes, and
groaned.

"Have you the stomach twist, my boy?" asked his mother tenderly.

"No; but I suppose I--I--am changing."

"No, you are not, Ippe. I have seen many angekoks made. There will be
no change till you have gone through the customs, so make your mind
easy, and have something to eat."

The youth, having had no breakfast, was ravenously hungry, and as the
process of feeding would not necessarily interfere with solemnity, he
agreed to the proposal with his accustomed look of satisfaction--which,
however, he suddenly nipped in the bud. Then, setting-to with an
expression that might have indicated the woes of a lifetime, he made a
hearty breakfast.

Thereafter he kept moving about the village all day in absolute silence,
and with a profound gloom on his face, by which the risibility of some
was tickled, while not a few were more or less awe-stricken.

It soon began to be rumoured that Ippegoo was the angekok-elect. In the
afternoon Ujarak returned from a visit, as he said, to the nether world,
and with his brother wizards--for there were several in the tribe--
confirmed the rumour.

As evening approached, Rooney entered