catch.

Once during a storm the bear was away hunting as usual, and did
not come home until evening. Then it sniffed at its foster-mother
and sprang up on to the bench, where its place was on the southern
side. Then the old foster-mother went out of the house, and found
outside the body of a dead man, which the bear had hauled home. Then
without going in again, the old woman went hurrying to the nearest
house, and cried at the window:

"Are you all at home?"

"Why?"

"The little bear has come home with a dead man, one whom I do not
know."

When it grew light, they went out and saw that it was the man from
the north, and they could see he had been running fast, for he had
drawn off his furs, and was in his underbreeches. Afterwards they
heard that it was his comrades who had urged the bear to resistance,
because he would not leave it alone.

A long time after this had happened, the old foster-mother said to
the bear:

"You had better not stay with me here always; you will be killed if
you do, and that would be a pity. You had better leave me."

And she wept as she said this. But the bear thrust its muzzle right
down to the floor and wept, so greatly did it grieve to go away
from her.

After this, the foster-mother went out every morning as soon as dawn
appeared, to look at the weather, and if there were but a cloud as
big as one's hand in the sky, she said nothing.

But one morning when she went out, there was not even a cloud as big
as a hand, and so she came in and said:

"Little bear, now you had better go; you have your own kin far away
out there."

But when the bear was ready to set out, the old foster-mother, weeping
very much, dipped her hands in oil and smeared them with soot, and
stroked the bear's side as it took leave of her, but in such manner
that it could not see what she was doing. The bear sniffed at her
and went away. But the old foster-mother wept all through that day,
and her fellows in the place mourned also for the loss of their bear.

But men say that far to the north, when many bears are abroad, there
will sometimes come a bear as big as an iceberg, with a black spot
on its side.

Here ends this story.

IMARASUGSSUAQ, WHO ATE HIS WIVES

It is said that the great Imarasugssuaq was wont to eat his wives. He
fattened them up, giving them nothing but salmon to eat, and nothing at
all to drink. Once when he had just lost his wife in the usual way, he
took to wife the