ter was playing
outside the house, he was bitten so badly by a savage dog that he
died. In his anger the father caught the dog up by the tail and struck
it against a post so violently that the dog fell in halves.

In his great sorrow, the father made a handsome, carved grave-box for
his son and placed the child with his toys in it. Then he went into
his house and for four days he did no work and would see no one. At
the end of that time he took his sled, and with his wife returned up
the river on their old trail, while the villagers sorrowfully watched
them go, for they had come to like the pair very much.

Before this time the villagers had always made the body of their sleds
from long strips of wood running lengthwise; but after they had seen
the dwarf's sled with many crosspieces, they adopted that model.

Before this time, too, they had always cast their dead out on the
tundra to be devoured by the dogs and wild beasts; but after they had
seen the dwarf people bury their son in a grave-box with toys placed
about him, they buried their dead in that way and observed four days
of mourning as had been done by the dwarf; for they liked him and his
gentle manners.

And ever since that time the hunters coming home at dusk and looking
toward the darkening tundra, sometimes see dwarf people who carry bows
and arrows, but who disappear into the ground if one tries to approach
them. They are harmless people, never attempting to do anyone an
injury. No one has ever spoken to these dwarfs since the time they
left the village; but deer hunters have often seen their tracks near
the foot of the mountains.

XXI

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LONE WOMAN OF ST. MICHAEL

The women south of St. Michael are poor seamstresses but fine dancers,
while those to the north are expert needlewomen but poor dancers; and
this is the way the Eskimo explain it.

Very long ago there were many men living in the northland, but there
was no woman among them. Far away in the southland a single woman was
known to live. At last the shrewdest young man of the northland
started and traveled southward till he came to the woman's house,
where he stopped and became her husband.

He was very proud of himself for getting ahead of the other young men
in the north. One day he sat in the house thinking of his former home,
and he said, "Ah, I have a wife, while even the son of the Headman has
none."

Meanwhile, the Headman's son had also set out to journe