e
should never come back. Who is it?"

"Gartok," answered her mother, with the air of one who has mentioned the
most hateful thing in creation.

Nootka laughed.

"Surely you are not fond of him!" exclaimed Mangivik, regarding his
daughter with a look of anxiety.

"You know that I'm not," answered the girl, playfully hitting her sire
on the back with the flap of her tail.

"Of course not--of course not; you could not be fond of an ugly walrus
like him," said the father, replying to her pleasantry by fondly patting
her knee.

Just then a young man was seen advancing from the beach, where he had
left his kayak.

"It is Oolalik," said Mrs Mangivik, shading her eyes with her hand from
the sun, which, in all the strength of its meridian splendour, was
shining full on her fat face. "He must have made a good hunt, or he
would not have come home before the others."

As she spoke Nootka arose hastily and re-entered the hut, from out of
which there issued almost immediately the sounds and the savoury odours
of roasting flesh.

Meanwhile Oolalik came up and gave vent to a polite grunt, or some such
sound, which was the Eskimo method of expressing a friendly salutation.

Mangivik and his wife grumped in reply.

"You are soon back," said the former.

"I have left a walrus and two seals on the rocks over there," answered
the youth, sitting down beside the old man.

"Good," returned the latter. "Come in and feed."

He rose and entered the hut. The young man who followed him was not so
much a handsome as a strapping fellow, with a quiet, sedate expression,
and a manly look that rendered him attractive to most of his friends.
Conversation, however, was not one of his strong points. He volunteered
no remarks after seating himself opposite to Nootka, who handed him a
walrus rib which she had just cooked over the oil lamp. Had Nootka been
a civilised girl she might have been suspected of conveying a suggestion
to the youth, for she was very fond of him, but, being an Eskimo of the
Far North, she knew nothing about ribs or of Mother Eve. The young man
however required no delicate suggestion, for he was equally fond of
Nootka, and he endeavoured to show his feelings by a prolonged stare
after he had accepted the food.

One is irresistibly impressed with the homogeneity of the human race
when one observes the curious similarities of taste and habit which
obtain alike in savage and civilised man. For a few moments th