st, and
followed Jean and Lollie into the cabin that was to be their home.

As she crossed the threshold the close, musty odor of decay smote her
unpleasantly. The room had one tiny cobwebbed window through which the
north light filtered. In the center a rough, home-made table, with one
leg slanting inward, supported some battered cooking utensils now green
with a fungus-like mould and disagreeably reminiscent of the Indian
hunters who had last camped in the place, no one knew how long ago. In
the corner where a stove had once stood, was a pile of damp soot and
ashes, and the floor was littered with decaying woolen socks, old
papers and rubber boots from which the tops had been cut to make a
house-shoe known to Alaskan miners as "stags." Here and there daylight
showed between the uncovered log walls, and great cobwebs wavered in
dusty festoons from the chinking of brown peat. An infirm ladder
leaned against one side of the room evidently for the purpose of
mounting to the loft indicated by the black opening that yawned in the
ceiling.

Ellen had no inclination to follow her sister into the little room that
opened off the right. She was appalled at the amount of work to be
done before the musty squalor of the place could be banished and the
cabin made really habitable. For a moment she even considered the
possibility of living in the tents until the White Chief brought the
winter provisions, by which time she hoped she might be able to
persuade her husband to leave the Island.

Boreland, coming into the room with the broom on his shoulder,
interrupted her gloomy thoughts.

"Pretty snug little place, eh, El?" he said cheerfully, looking about
him and lunging for the nearest cobweb with his broom. "The roof is
good and when we get another window here facing the sea, and fix her up
a bit, we'll be cozy as bears in a cave."

He filled his pipe, still warm from the last smoke, and lighted it.
Going to the opening leading to the next room he called: "Clear out
now, young ones. I'm going to start things going in here pretty
pronto!"

Through the open cabin doorway Ellen could see Harlan sitting by the
bonfire in a borrowed undershirt and the scarlet blanket. He seemed
refreshed and strengthened by his lunch and was telling Kayak Bill of
his failure to swim back to the _Hoonah_, and his subsequent landing on
the south end of the Island. Though all but exhausted by his battle
with the waves he had managed to di