t the Manito saved him;
In the form of a Skookum he saved him."

Chapter 34. The Birch-bark Vessels

Rolf was sore and stiff for a week afterward; so was Skookum. There were
times when Quonab was cold, moody, and silent for days. Then some milder
wind would blow in the region of his heart and the bleak ice surface
melted into running rills of memory or kindly emanation.

Just before the buck adventure, there had been an unpleasant time of
chill and aloofness. It arose over little. Since the frost had come,
sealing the waters outside, Quonab would wash his hands in the vessel
that was also the bread pan. Rolf had New England ideas of propriety
in cooking matters, and finally he forgot the respect due to age and
experience. That was one reason why he went out alone that day. Now,
with time to think things over, the obvious safeguard would be to have
a wash bowl; but where to get it? In those days, tins were scarce and
ex-pensive. It was the custom to look in the woods for nearly all the
necessaries of life; and, guided by ancient custom and experience, they
seldom looked in vain. Rolf had seen, and indeed made, watering troughs,
pig troughs, sap troughs, hen troughs, etc., all his life, and he now
set to work with the axe and a block of basswood to hew out a trough
for a wash bowl. With adequate tools he might have made a good one; but,
working with an axe and a stiff arm, the result was a very heavy, crude
affair. It would indeed hold water, but it was almost impossible to dip
it into the water hole, so that a dipper was needed.

When Quonab saw the plan and the result, he said: "In my father's lodge
we had only birch bark. See; I shall make a bowl." He took from the
storehouse a big roll of birch bark, gathered in warm weather (it can
scarcely be done in cold), for use in repairing the canoe. Selecting a
good part he cut out a square, two feet each way, and put it in the big
pot which was full of boiling water. At the same time he soaked with
it a bundle of wattap, or long fibrous roots of the white spruce, also
gathered before the frost came, with a view to canoe repairs in the
spring.

While these were softening in the hot water, he cut a couple of long
splints of birch, as nearly as possible half an inch wide and an eighth
of an inch thick, and put them to steep with the bark. Next he made two
or three straddle pins or clamps, like clothes pegs, by splitting the
ends of some sticks which had a knot at o