ew well that he had said enough.

At first sight of the Eskimo band, Kabelaw's heart had leaped for joy,
because she at once made up her mind to explain how matters stood, and
claim protection, which she had no doubt they would grant. But some
Eskimos, not less than many civilised people, are deeply imbued with
superstition, and the bare idea of an invisible torngak pursuing her to
the death--in the possibility of which she and Nunaga more or less
believed--was too much for her. In fear and trembling she made up her
mind to be silent, and submit to her fate. It need scarcely be added,
so did her more timid companion.

"Where do you come from?" asked the leader of the party when they met.

"From the far-away _there_," replied the wily wizard, pointing
northward. "I do not ask where _you_ come from."

"Why not?" demanded the leader, in some surprise.

"Because I know already," answered Ujarak, "that you come from the
far-away _there_," pointing southward; "and I know that, because I am an
angekok. You have come from a spot near to the land where the Kablunets
have settled, and you are bringing iron and other things to exchange
with my kinsmen for horns of the narwhal and tusks of the walrus."

Knowing as he did from rumour that Eskimos from the Moravian settlements
were in the habit of travelling northward for the purposes of barter,
(though they had not up to that time travelled so far north as his own
tribe), and observing bundles of hoop-iron on the sledges, it did not
require much penetration on the part of a quick mind like that of Ujarak
to guess whence the strangers had come, and what their object was.
Nevertheless, the leader and most of the party who had circled round the
wizard and his sledge, opened their eyes in amazement at this smart
statement of their affairs.

"My brother must indeed be a great angekok, for he seems to know all
things. But we did not come from _near_ the land where the Kablunets
have built their huts. We have come _from_ it," said the matter-of-fact
leader.

"Did I not say that?" returned Ujarak promptly.

"No; you said near it--whereas we came from it, from inside of itself."

"Inside of itself must be very near it, surely!" retorted the wizard,
with a grave look of appeal to those around him.

A laugh and nod of approval was the reply, for Eskimos appreciate even
the small end of a joke, however poor, and often allow it to sway their
judgment more powerfully than the b