arpoon?" asked the former.

"Found it, leaning agin a tree while I were out after firewood," replied
Jalap Coombs, at the same time producing and proudly exhibiting a heavy
A-yan spear, such as were formerly used by the natives of the Pelly
River valley. "It were a trifle rusty, and a trifle light in the butt,"
he added, "but it come in mighty handy when it were most needed, and for
an old whaler it are not a bad sort of a weepon. I'm free to say,
though, that I might have had hard luck in tackling the beast with it ef
he hadn't been already wounded. I didn't know it till after he were
dead, but when I come to cut him up, I saw where he'd been bleeding
pretty free, and then I found this bullet in his innards. Still, I don't
reckin you'd have called him a mouse, nor yet a rat, if ye'd seed him
like I did under full sail, with horns set wing and wing, showing the
speed of a fifty-ton schooner. If I hadn't had the harpoon I'd left him
severely alone; but I allowed that a weepon as were good enough for a
whale would do for a deer, even ef he were bigger than the sun."

"It's a rifle-bullet, calibre forty-four," said Phil, who was examining
the bit of lead that Jalap Coombs had taken from his "big deer." "I
wonder if it can be possible that he is the same moose I wounded, and
without whose lead I should never have found Cree Jim's cabin. It seems
incredible that he should have come right back to camp to be killed,
though I suppose it is possible. Certainly good fortune, or good luck,
does seem to be pretty steadily on our side, and without the aid of the
fur-seal's tooth either," he added, with a sly glance at Serge.

As soon as breakfast was finished, Phil and Serge slipped away, taking a
sledge, to which was lashed a couple of axes, with them. They were going
back to bury the parents of the child, who was so happily oblivious of
their errand that he did not even take note of their departure.

The lads had no idea of how they should accomplish their sorrowful task.
Even with proper tools they knew it would be impossible to dig a grave
in the frozen ground, and as they had only axes with which to work, this
plan was dismissed without discussion.

They had not settled on any plan when they rounded the last bend of the
little stream and gained a point from which the cabin should have been
visible. Then they saw at a glance that the task they had been dreading
had been accomplished without their aid. There was no cabin, but