Okiok's hut. No one was at home
except Nuna and Tumbler. The latter was playing, as usual, with his
little friend Pussi. The goodwife was busy over the cooking-lamp.

"Where is your husband, Nuna?" asked the sailor, sitting down on a
walrus skull.

"Out after seals."

"And Nunaga?"

"Visiting the mother of Arbalik."

The seaman looked thoughtfully at the lamp-smoke for a few moments.

"She is a hard woman, that mother of Arbalik," he said.

"Issek is not so hard as she looks," returned Mrs Okiok; "her voice is
rough, but her heart is soft."

"I'm glad to hear you speak well of her," said Rooney, "for I don't like
to think ill of any one if I can help it; but sometimes I can't help it.
Now, there's your angekok Ujarak: I cannot think well of him. Have you
a good word to say in his favour?"

"No, not one. He is bad through and through--from the skin to the bone.
I know him well," said Nuna, with a flourish of her cooking-stick that
almost overturned the lamp.

"But you may be mistaken," remarked Rooney, smiling. "You are mistaken
even in the matter of his body, to say nothing of his spirit."

"How so?" asked Nuna quickly.

"You said he is bad through and through. From skin to bone is not
through and through. To be quite correct, you must go from skin to
marrow."

Nuna acknowledged this by violently plunging her cooking-stick into the
pot.

"Well now, Nuna," continued Rooney, in a confidential tone, "tell me--"

At that moment he was interrupted by the entrance of the master of the
mansion, who quietly sat down on another skull close to his friend.

"I was just going to ask your wife, Okiok, what she and you think of
this business of making an angekok of poor Ippegoo," said Rooney.

"We think it is like a seal with its tail where its head should be, its
skin in its stomach, and all its bones outside; all nonsense--
foolishness," answered Okiok, with more of indignation in his look and
tone than he was wont to display.

"Then you don't believe in angekoks?" asked Rooney.

"No," replied the Eskimo earnestly; "I don't. I think they are clever
scoundrels--clever fools. And more, I don't believe in torngaks or any
other spirits."

"In that you are wrong," said Rooney. "There is one great and good
Spirit, who made and rules the universe."

"I'm not sure of that," returned the Eskimo, with a somewhat dogged and
perplexed look, that showed the subject was not quite new to him. "I
never saw,