"It's nothing," says the Trader. "A Siwash dog of any spirit is always
trailing his coat"; and Salmon P. subsided.

Not so Kaviak. Back to the door, head up, he listened. They had
observed the oddity before. The melancholy note of the Mahlemeut never
yet had failed to stir his sombre little soul. He was standing now
looking up at the latch, high, and made for white men, eager, breathing
fast, listening to that dismal sound that is like nothing else in
nature--listening as might an exiled Scot to the skirl of bagpipes;
listening as a Tyrolese who hears yodelling on foreign hills, or as the
dweller in a distant land to the sound of the dear home speech.

The noise outside grew louder, the air was rent with howls of rage and
defiance.

"Sounds as if there's 'bout a million mad dogs on your front stoop,"
says Schiff, knowing there must be a great deal going on if any of it
reached his ears.

"You set still." His pardner pushed him down on his stool. "Mr. Benham
and I'll see what's up."

The Trader leisurely opened the door, Salmon P. keeping modestly
behind, while Kaviak darted forward only to be caught back by Mac. An
avalanche of sound swept in--a mighty howling and snarling and cracking
of whips, and underneath the higher clamour, human voices--and in
dashes the Boy, powdered with snow, laughing and balancing carefully in
his mittened hands a little Yukon spruce, every needle diamond-pointed,
every sturdy branch white with frost crystals and soft woolly snow, and
bearing its little harvest of curious fruit--sweet-cake rings and stars
and two gingerbread men hanging by pack-thread from the white and green
branches, the Noah's Ark lodged in one crotch, the very amateur
snow-shoes in another, and the lost toys wrapped up, transfigured in
tobacco-foil, dangling merrily before Kaviak's incredulous eyes.

"There's your Christmas-tree!" and the bringer, who had carried the
tree so that no little puff of snow or delicate crystal should fall
off, having made a successful entrance and dazzled the child, gave way
to the strong excitement that shot light out of his eyes and brought
scarlet into his cheeks. "Here, take it!" He dashed the tree down in
front of Kaviak, and a sudden storm agitated its sturdy branches; it
snowed about the floor, and the strange fruit whirled and spun in the
blast. Kaviak clutched it, far too dazed to do more than stare. The Boy
stamped the snow off his mucklucks on the threshold, and dashed his