ust look how broad they are. It doesn't matter to your stomach
whether you're big up and down, or big to and fro."

"It's their furs make 'em look like that. They're the most awful little
runts I ever saw!"

"Well, I reckon _you'd_ think they were big, too--big as Nova
Scotia--if _you'd_ found 'em--come on 'em suddenly like that in the
woods--"

"Which is the...?"

"Oh, the son of the chief is in the middle, the one who is taking off
his civilised fur-coat. He says his father's got a heap of pelts (you
could get things for your collection, Mac), and he's got two
reindeer-skin shirts with hoods--'parkis,' you know, like the others
are wearing--"

They were quite near now.

"How do," said the foremost native affably.

"How do." The Boy came forward and shook hands as though he hadn't seen
him for a month. "This," says he, turning first to Mac and then to the
other white men, "this is Prince Nicholas of Pymeut. Walk right in, all
of you, and have something to eat."

The visitors sat on the ground round the stove, as close as they could
get without scorching, and the atmosphere was quickly heavy with their
presence. When they slipped back their hoods it was seen that two of
the men wore the "tartar tonsure," after the fashion of the coast.

"Where do you come from?" inquired the Colonel of the man nearest him,
who simply blinked and was dumb.

"This is the one that talks English," said the Boy, indicating Nicholas,
"and he lives at Pymeut, and he's been converted."

"How far is Pymeut?"

"We sleep Pymeut to-night," says Nicholas.

"Which way?"

The native jerked his head up the river.

"Many people there?"

He nodded.

"White men, too?"

He shook his head.

"How far to the nearest white men?"

Nicholas's mind wandered from the white man's catechism and fixed
itself on his race's immemorial problem: how far it was to the nearest
thing to eat.

"I thought you said he could speak English."

"So he can, first rate. He and I had a great pow-wow, didn't we,
Nicholas?"

Nicholas smiled absently, and fixed his one eye on the bacon that Mac
was cutting on the deal box into such delicate slices.

"He'll talk all right," said the Boy, "when he's had some breakfast."

Mac had finished the cutting, and now put the frying-pan on an open
hole in the little stove.

"Cook him?" inquired Nicholas.

"Yes. Don't you cook him?"

"Take heap time, cook him."

"You couldn't eat it raw!"

Nicholas nodded