snatched the thing he had
held in his mouth.

"Oh, see, see!" he cried, holding up his treasure. "See what the
teacher gave me!"

What he held was the half of a lead pencil, a rarity to him, given
to him now as a prize at school.

"And see!" cried the excited lad once more.

He pulled from his reindeer coat a piece of paper. The paper was
part of his prize, too. He made some rude marks on the paper with
his pencil, and held them where they were visible by the light of
the small stone lamp, shaped like a huge clam shell, and burning
with walrus oil. The lad's face was illumined with enthusiasm. Never
before had he owned such treasures. To think they were his own! He
had earned them by good behavior, and diligent, though extremely
slow, attempts at learning. A sarcastic laugh came from one side of
the platform of snow, that was built around the whole circular
interior of the igloo. On the platform lounged the lad's brother,
Tanana. "You went without your breakfast yesterday, and ran to
school, and now you come back with those things!" laughed Tanana.
"You are a dog of the teacher's team, Anvik! He can drive you."

Anvik's black eyes snapped.

"He does not drive me!" cried the boy. "He teaches me to want to
learn! I have gone to school many days. I want to learn, to learn! I
can make A and B. See!"

He pushed his paper with its awkwardly formed letters farther into
the lamp's light. The edge of the precious paper took fire, and with
a cry of alarm, Anvik smothered his paper in the snow.

His brother laughed again.

"To-morrow will be another day," he said. "Why should anybody learn
for to-morrow?"

But the mother of the two lads stretched out her hand, and took the
paper, and looked at the straggling marks. The fat baby, that she
carried in the hood of her reindeer suit, crowed over her shoulder
at the piece of paper, and Anvik forgot to be angry. He put his
pencil in his mother's hand. She looked curiously at the strange new
thing.

"You make A, too, mother," urged the boy; and, putting his hand on
his mother's, he tried to show her how to make the strange marks.

His mother did little more than touch the paper with the pencil. She
smiled at the tiny dark line she had made, and gave back the pencil
and paper to the boy. She was proud of him, proud that the strange
white man should have thought her boy good enough to give him such
queer things. Anvik saw her pride, and felt comforted.

"To-morrow will be